Vladimir Putin's message to Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian landed in Tehran with the subtlety of a thrown brick. In a Kremlin-published letter, the Russian leader called the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a 'cynical' act that violated 'all norms of human morality and international law' — a condemnation framed not as wartime collateral, but as an 'assassination.'
It was an expression of sympathy. It also carried an element of accusation and arrived as the Middle East sank further into a conflict that is now spilling beyond Iran and Israel into the Gulf's airports, skylines and shipping routes.
