Russia's interesting position coincided with emerging news that representatives from the two rivals had already met in Egypt under Australian sponsorship.
Australian paper The Age, reported that a meeting took place in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, last month as part of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, an expert panel assembled by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to help rid the world of nuclear arms.
Iran's senior envoy to the meeting was its ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
Israel sent the director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Merav Zafary-Odiz. Israel's former foreign affairs minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, was also at the meeting in a non-official role.
In fact any contacts between Israel and Iran should come as no surprise. The two countries have a track record of relations and communications that goes even beyond the Islamic revolution era.
Trita Parsi’s excellent book "Treacherous Alliance", details the fascinating complex relationship between the US, Iran, and Israel.
Consider this piece of information he provides about the Israeli Iranian communications in the post-Khomeini era:
In early 1980s, only months after the eruption of the hostage crisis, Ahmed Kashani, the youngest son of Grand Ayatollah Abol Qassem Kashani, who had played a key role in the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951, visited Israel – most likely the first Iranian to do so after the revolution – to discuss arms sales and military cooperation against Iraq’s nuclear program at Osirak.
While there is a tendency to limit the contacts between Israel and Iran to the well known "Iran Contra", in which Tel Aviv played a crucial role in facilitating arms shipments to Tehran from the US, Parsi uncovers the multi-folded communications between the two countries in this respect.
Parsi quotes the Jaffee Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University as saying that arms sales to Iran totaled an estimated $500 million from 1980 to 1983, most of it was paid for by Iranian oil delivered to Israel.
Parsi brilliantly puts the Israeli Iranian relations in the perspective of Bin Gurion's "Periphery Doctrine", according to which Israel, for a long period of time, pursued alliances with the belt states around the Arab World, which are Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia under the former Haile Selassie emperors. Below is a soundbite from the book on the DNA of such a relation.
In May 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told NBC that Tel Aviv had supplied Iran with arms and ammunition because it viewed Iraq as "being dangerous to the peace process in the Middle East". Sharon added that Israel provided the arms to Iran because it felt it was important to "leave a small window open" to the possibility of good relations with Iran in the future.
Nevertheless, it is not a relation limited to politics or strategic interests. Every Jewish pupil learns in his/her early years how, back in 536 BC, the king of Persia freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity.
It is definitely too early to jump into final conclusions concerning the prospects of the Iranian-Israeli relations. However, the fact the Lavrov's statement and The Age report come at a time of growing tension between Turkey -one of the 4 pillars of the periphery doctrine- and Israel, a growing irritation between Turkey and Iran given the latest Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and finally Iran's need (willingness is still to be determined) to end the standoff over its nuclear program, all might constitute elements for a renewed kick off in the relations between Iran and Israel.
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