Western sanctions bring Russia and Iran together: Russian minister urges to step up transit via Azerbaijan

Iran is keen to promote ties between Tehran and Moscow, Ali Tayyebnia, Iran’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance said during his meeting with Alexei Ulyukayev, Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, reports the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

The Iranian minister highlighted that the presidents of Iran and Russia had a constructive meeting and exchanged views on how to broaden trade and economic cooperation of the two neighbor countries. According to him, when Iran and Russia were affected by unilateral Western sanctions, they got quite favorable opportunities to satisfy their needs through bilateral trade and investments.

Alexei Ulyukayev, in his turn, confirmed that the two states have sufficient opportunities to boost cooperation. The Russian minister said that in order to remove obstacles that hinder development of trade between Iran and Russia, the two countries work to use the logistic opportunities in the field of the sea, air and railway communication to organize freight transit via Azerbaijan. To satisfy the two countries' needs in the field of trade and industrial production, Ulyukayev said, large-scale joint projects should be developed and implemented to manufacture and sell goods in the domestic markets and export the surplus production to third countries.

Following the talks with the Russian minister, Ali Tayyebnia told reporters that the visit of the Russian economic development minister to Iran pursued practical implementation of the agreements the two countries' leaders achieved earlier to promote the bilateral ties. During the meeting with Alexei Ulyukayev, they had a detailed discussion on problems and difficulties on the way towards development of the Iranian-Russia relations. A decision was made to prepare and sign an agreement to enhance the Iran-Russia customs cooperation and an agreement on mutual investments within the shortest possible time.

The Iranian minister said the commodity turnover of the two countries is rather limited so far unlike the level of political relations. The minister believes that indicator can be increased significantly in the short run. He called it regrettable that the investment cooperation with Russia is at a low level. According to Tayyebnia, together with his Russian counterpart they agreed that the volume of mutual investments could be increased by more than tenfold.