section_path: Foreign policy/Middle East and Africa
section_name: Middle East and Africa
paragraph_text: Middle East and Africa
  
  On 16 October 2007, Putin visited Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran, where he met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This was the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since Joseph Stalin 's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943, and marked a significant event in Iran–Russia relations. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". Putin was quoted as describing Iran as a "partner", although he expressed concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme.
  
  In April 2008, Putin became the first Russian president to visit Libya. Putin condemned the 2011 foreign military intervention in Libya, referring to the UN resolution as "defective and flawed", and added, "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades". Upon the death of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin called it as "planned murder" by the US, saying: "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed", and "There was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?"
  
  From 2000 to 2010, Russia sold around $1.5 billion worth of arms to Syria, making Damascus Russia's seventh-largest client. During the Syrian civil war, Russia threatened to veto any sanctions against the Syrian government, and continued to supply arms to its regime.
  
  Putin opposed any foreign intervention in the Syrian civil war. In June 2012, in Paris, he rejected the statement of French president François Hollande who called on Bashar al-Assad to step down. Putin echoed Assad's argument that anti-regime militants were responsible for much of the bloodshed. He also talked about previous NATO interventions and their results, and asked, "What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer".
  
  On 11 September 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed by Putin urging caution against US intervention in Syria and criticizing American exceptionalism. Putin subsequently helped to arrange for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. In 2015, he took a stronger pro-Assad stance and mobilized military support for the regime. Some analysts have summarized Putin as being allied with Shiites and Alawites in the Middle East.
  
  In 2017, Putin dispatched Russian PMCs to back the Touadéra regime in the Central African Republic Civil War, gaining a permanent military presence in return. The first Russia-Africa Summit was held in October 2019 in Sochi, Russia, co-hosted by Putin and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The meeting was attended by 43 heads of state and government from African countries.
  
  In October 2019, Putin visited the United Arab Emirates, where six agreements were struck with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. One of them included shared investments between Russian sovereign wealth fund and the Emirati investment fund Mubadala. The two nations signed deals worth over $1.3bn, in energy, health and advance technology sectors. On 22 October 2021, Putin highlighted the "unique bond" between Russia and Israel during a meeting with Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.