Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has described Western attempts to fragment the ongoing conflict over Iran into two separate wars as “weak conversations in the kitchen”—a reference to Soviet-era propaganda tactics.
In an interview with RT India on May 13, Lavrov stated that Western powers frame the United States and Israel’s actions as a “righteous war” by destroying nuclear weapons while simultaneously portraying Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz without preconditions as a second conflict.
He noted: “You know, in the Soviet Union, they always whispered in the kitchen and said what kind of primitive propaganda we have in the USSR. I believe that it was head and shoulders higher than what we are now hearing from the mouths of Western ideologists justifying the outrage.”
Lavrov emphasized that the root cause of the conflict is unprovoked aggression against Iran. He added that Western countries attempt to convince Arab nations these constitute two distinct wars: one where U.S. and Israeli actions are labeled “righteous” because they destroy a nuclear bomb—despite no such bomb existing and former President Donald Trump having announced in June 2025 that all of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles were destroyed.
“The ‘second’ war,” Lavrov said, “is what Iran took, ‘woke up’ in the morning, and ‘closed’ the Strait of Hormuz.”
