President Saakashvili said Russia was “playing” with Iranian nuclear program and using it as leverage against the United States.

“The pattern of Russian policy has been to keep problem going in order to capitalize on that,” Saakashvili, who is in New York, said in an interview with Fox News on September 22, when he was asked what he thought about “Russia financing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

“So if Iran is solved, if the whole issue goes away, then what’s leverage for Russians with the United States? So they are playing with it pretty smartly – promising things to the west, but also delivering things to the Iranians. I think in the process they’ve [Russians] lost confidence of all sides, but they’ve been doing this forever,” Saakashvili said.

He was then asked what if Israel acted unilaterally against Iran. Saakashvili responded that “the best solution for everybody is to solve it peacefully.”

“But of course there are basic principles and the basic principles are that obviously Israel has right for security and existence and nobody can question it – that’s crystal clear for me,” he said.

He also said there should be no “language of menace”, which, he said, “does not give anything.”

Saakashvili said stakes were high for Georgia, located close to this region. “The peace should be given a chance and I hope that negotiations will really have the results,” he added.

In the same 8-minute long interview Saakashvili reiterated Georgia’s commitment to the Afghan operation saying: “We can not leave Afghanistan without solving this.”

“There is no way we should give up that struggle,” he said.

He also lashed out at Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin blaming him for the fact that 500,000 refugees were not able to return back to their homes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

“Obviously not only this is coming down from Putin, but he is very proud of it,” Saakashvili said.