Iran’s Rouhani Starts First Post-Sanctions European Trip

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that he has conferred on ways to reinvigorate campaign against terrorist and extremist groups in the region in the meeting with his visiting Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Tehran on Saturday.

Rouhani said Iran attaches great importance to Xi’s trip to Iran, calling it a “historic event”.

China and Iran should deepen mutual understanding, boost political trust and find innovative ways for their cooperation, he said, noting that the cooperative documents signed during his visit, including the one on the Belt and Road Initiative, would help align their development plans while making good use of respective advantages of the two sides.

Trade between the two countries was worth US$52 billion in 2014.

Officials in Rome said Italian companies were poised to sign deals worth up to 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) over the next two days, including in the energy and steel sectors.

At the same time, Le predicted that China is nearly sure to face pressure from all those countries which are now seeking to cooperate with Iran.In this vein, Li underscored that there will certainly be more space for Sino-Iranian cooperation, touting China as Iran’s largest trade partner and a strategic complement to Iran.

He also visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt during a Middle East tour that began last Tuesday.

At a joint press conference held after a signing ceremony, Rouhani noted that Iran and China had enjoyed “two millennia of solid bilateral relations”.

The three-day trip comes a week after Tehran’s deal with world powers came into force, allowing the United States and the European Union to lift economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear activities.

Khamenei said Iran will never forget Chinese cooperations during the sanctions. “It’s like love. It is only the proof of love that counts”, said a senior French diplomat. With sanctions ended, Iran may trigger at least $US50 billion a year in foreign investment to finance a rebound in an economy hit by the oil slump, the country’s central bank governor said last week. The visit to France, the first by an Iranian president since 1999, will provide opportunities to smooth over particularly awkward relations with a country that has historically been comparatively friendly.

USA and other sanctions that were not imposed due to Iran’s nuclear actvities remain in place, and Khamenei has stressed that the deal does not mean ties with the United States will improve.

While China and Iran have only had diplomatic ties since 1990, a lot has been made about the historical ties between China and Iran, which can be traced back well over a thousand years.