Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday that cooperation between countries under US sanctions would make them “stronger.”
“Relations between countries under US sanctions, such as Iran, Russia or other countries, can overcome many problems and issues and strengthen them,” Raisi said at a meeting with Putin in Uzbekistan.
“Americans think that no matter what country they impose sanctions on, they will be stopped, their opinion is wrong.”
Raisi said that his country is “seriously determined to develop bilateral strategic relations” with Russia in the fields of politics, economy, trade and aerospace.
It was the second meeting between Raisi and Putin in two months after the Russian president’s visit to Tehran on July 19.
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Putin also welcomed the growth of ties with the Islamic Republic, saying that “at the bilateral level, cooperation is developing positively.”
He added that work on a new major Russian-Iranian treaty on strategic ties is almost complete and that next week Moscow will send a Russian business delegation to Iran to develop commercial ties.
“We are doing everything to make Iran a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Putin added, referring to Tehran’s bid for full membership in the group, which includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four former Soviet states in Central Asia. . countries.
For his part, the Iranian president said that his country’s membership in the SCO and its relations with its member countries “can greatly help the path of Iran’s economic development and the development of the region.”
Iran, one of the four observer states of the SCO, applied for full membership in 2008, but its bid was slowed by UN and US sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.
Several members of the SCO did not want a country under international sanctions in their ranks – a situation that now concerns Russia as well.
At a conference in Dushanbe last September, bloc members backed Iran’s future membership.
On the sidelines of the SCO summit in Samarkand on Wednesday, Iran signed documents on its full membership in the organization, which should take place in the future, the country’s foreign minister said on Twitter.
