Iran aims for closer ties with China, ‘has never trusted the West’

Chinese President Xi Jinping is now on a visit to the Middle Eastern nation, Reuters reported.

Iran and China agreed to expand bilateral ties and increase trade to $600 billion in the next 10 years, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday during a visit to Tehran by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Xi witnessed high-ranking officials of their respective countries signing a total of 17 memorandums of understanding and other documents that establish “a maritime Silk Road of the 21st century” and the “peaceful use” of atomic energy, the Iranian presidency said.

Both leaders have also agreed to set up an annual meetings between the Foreign Ministers of China and Iran.

Khamenei expressed gratitude to China for its enduring support for Iran, and said that Tehran is willing to push the bilateral practical cooperation to a new high.

China has committed to “invest and finance upstream and downstream energy projects in Iran”, it said. He recalled that China has played a role of a major trading partner of Iran for many years.

The Majlis, or parliament of Iran, is keen to increase its exchanges with the People’s Congress of China, Larijani said.

Chinese President Xi’s visit to Iran came after a stop in Saudi Arabia earlier in the week during that country’s heightened tensions with Iran. The two countries also agreed to boost mutual trade.

“China is still heavily dependent on Iran for its energy imports, and Russian Federation needs Iran in terms of its new security architecture vision for the Middle East”, said Ellie Geranmayeh, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Rouhani is set to visit Italy and France next week on his first tour of Europe since the lifting of sanctions in a bid to strengthen stagnant business ties between Iran and the bloc. “We would just hope that, just as China has played a very constructive role throughout this process, that China will continue to play that role in all of its engagement with the Iranian Government”, says U.S. Ambassador Stephan Mull, Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation at the State Department.

A State Department official told VOA the USA anticipates that “China will join us and others in encouraging all parties to avoid actions that escalate sectarian tensions in the region”.

Iran is now one of six observers of the SCO, which was founded in 2001 and now has China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as its full members. “We have also agreed today to raise our relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership and issued a corresponding statement”, RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.

Late Saturday he met supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said Tehran “would never forget” Beijing’s cooperation during the years of global sanctions against Iran.