Beijing, April 15 -- Even as the world watches a tenous ceaefire between Iran and the US playout a key meeting was held on Wednesday in Beijning between Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Speaking after the meeting Lavrov said that China and Russia will not be pushed into the background, and will remain active in the Middle East situation.

Lavrov further said that the crisis in the Gulf region will not return to normalcy with the effort to cut it off.

"The Middle East and the Persian Gulf region, where the most significant events are taking place, represent an obvious crisis... a crisis knot that will be very difficult to untie, and attempts to simply cut it, I think, are unlikely to produce result...