Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said his government is seeking to create a balance in the country's international relations.
IRNA says he made the remarks Tuesday night when he was taking part in live interview with the Iranian broadcasters.
Speaking in his fourth TV interview, the Iranian president reportedly said “the government is pursuing a kind of balance in its international policies.” “Iran's trade and economic interaction with Tajikistan has tripled since my visit,” he added.
Referring to the imbalance in the international policies, Raisi said, “For example, as the country's political relations have been promoted in the international field, economic and trade relations and interactions have not been considered, and we have a kind of backwardness in this regard.”
“Enormous trade and economic capacity can be established with our country's 15 neighbors," he noted.
"As a result of the agreements reached during my visit to Tajikistan, the economic and trade relations between the two countries have tripled," Dr. Raisi said, noting that during the visit to Turkmenistan apart from the swap discussion, transit relations were established between the two countries and good trade-economic relations were established.
According to him, Iran's relations with Azerbaijan and Russia have been developed
"Iran's trade capacity with Russia is not what we see today," said President Raisi. “The volume of over $3 billion dollars of trade relations between the two countries today could easily reach $10 billion. We can import many goods from Russia, and we also have many agricultural products and goods that could be exported to the Russian market.”
President Raisi says the government operates in two areas: 1) neutralizing sanctions; and 2) lifting sanctions.
According to him, one of the ways to neutralize sanctions is to have relations with neighbors, and “Russia is one of Iran's great neighbors, so we cannot ignore having economic, trade, and many relations that we can have with each other as an independent and capable country.”
Referring to the Iran-Russia consensus on the need to break the dollar's dominance over the two countries' monetary and financial transactions, Raisi said, "Mr. Putin and I agreed that we could do a lot of trade between the two countries with the national currency. We had good agreements in the fields of defense, security, aerospace and other areas of mutual interest.”
Referring to the importance of activating the North-South Corridor to facilitate and expand Iran's economic cooperation with neighboring countries, including Russia, Raisi noted, “In addition to these, various decisions regarding securing people's interests and the country's economic development in line with the neighborhood diplomacy was adopted".
"The basis of our work is interaction with the whole world. I announced this in the election campaign and I will follow this, we will interact with all the countries of the world that want to interact with us, but the countries that want to oppose us, naturally we will resist them. But what we have in our foreign policy program is interaction with all countries," President Raisi added.
President Raisi has addressed the nation three times so far since he took office on August 5, 2021.
