China seeks ‘new chapter’ with Iran after sanctions lifted

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran in November.

Khamenei’s comments on Saturday came as the two countries agreed to increase bilateral trade to $600bn over the next decade after a visit to Tehran by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The BBC reported Xi also met with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“There are so many moving parts to this Iranian-U.S. tango that it’s really hard to predict ahead, never mind a year, but a couple weeks ahead”, says Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, who specializes in Iran politics.

Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed Saturday with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to help construct Iran’s high-speed train system as part of China’s “One Belt and One Road” initiative to build a modern “Silk Road”.

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.

After the meeting, Rouhani said Tehran plans to significantly increase trade with China in the next 10 years to $600 billion from around $52 billion in 2014, according to the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Xi was quoted as saying that “the economies of Iran and China complete one another”.

Ayatollah Khamenei referred to energy as one of the most important issues of today’s world and stated: “Iran is the only independent country in the region that can be trusted in the area of energy because unlike many regional countries, the energy policy of Iran is not influenced by any non-Iranian factor”.

The rate of auto ownership in Iran is just 100 per 1,000 people – six times less than in Europe – and consumers have had limited access to new vehicles under Western sanctions.

Iran will seek to restore its economic relations with Rome and Paris, which were among Tehran’s main economic partners before the tightening of global sanctions in January 2012.

“China has been a good friend of the Islamic Republic during the times that crippling sanctions were imposed on Iran“, he told Al Jazeera.

Rouhani, a pragmatist elected in 2013 on a platform to reduce Iran’s isolation, championed the deal under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in return for the lifting of U.S., European Union and United Nations sanctions this month. Iran is already cheating on the nuclear deal through its missile tests, since the United Nations resolution governing the implementation of that deal also called for restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile development and testing, for a period of eight years. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.