A letter sent by 47 US senators to Iranian negotiators has been openly decried by Iran’s chief foreign policy representative. Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, lambasted the letter as lacking in any legal value and as a “propaganda ploy.” Zarif went on to note that the letter is unprecedented in diplomatic history, and a sign that certain political sectors within the United States are concerned that a peaceful deal could be made, adding that the senators in question considered peace an “existential threat.”

The decision to send an open letter to Iran was openly criticized not only by Zarif and by Obama administration officials, but by a former Bush administration official, who clarified that power to make a deal with Iran is invested in the executive branch, not in the legislative.  Any deal made with Iran will include more than two signatories, and will also be endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.

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News Briefs:

• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is in Ashgabat today for visits with his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. The two leaders are expected to enter into discussions about energy, transport and general economic relations.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that a group made up of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey will jointly establish a mechanism by which natural gas originating in Turkmenistan will be transferred to European markets. Natural gas is expected to flow from the Hazar Basin to the EU via Turkey through the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP).

• Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly acknowledged for the first time that the annexation of Crimea was already in the works several weeks before Crimea’s self-referendum. According to Putin, the decision to annex Crimea came days after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by mobs in Kiev.

• EurasiaNet published a piece documenting the presence of Tajik immigrants in the Russian army. Previously Tajik migrants weren’t allowed to join the 201^st Russian military base in Tajikistan, though new Russian legislation spearheaded by Vladimir Putin now permits the presence of foreign members of the Russian military on any Russian base in the world.