Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement signed with China will be a “win-win” game for the two countries as it serves both sides’ interests.
“In this agreement, we have included anything that is in line with the interests of the two nations. Tehran and Beijing will benefit from the deal, which will today enter its implementation phase,” he told China Global Television Network (CGTN), according to Press TV.
“Tehran-Beijing relations and bonds are expanding in all areas and the 25-year [Comprehensive] Strategic Partnership and cooperation will pursue a win-win approach.”
The agreement, which was signed in Tehran in March 2021, is meant to strengthen longstanding economic and political alliance between Iran and China and is viewed as a milestone in their bilateral relations.
Heading a high-ranking politico-economic delegation, Iran’s top diplomat traveled to China on Thursday at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.
Amir-Abdollahian told CGTN that he had discussed with Chinese officials the implementation of the partnership deal as well as important regional and international developments and the Vienna talks between Iran and the remaining five parties to the 2015 nuclear accord, including China.
He said the Chinese envoy to the Vienna talks, Wang Qun, was one of the active parties in the diplomatic process.
The Chinese negotiator, Amir-Abdollahian added, played a constructive role in supporting Iran’s nuclear rights and underlined the need for the removal of oppressive U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Common enemy

On Sunday, Ahmad Amirabadi-Farahani, the chairman of Iran-China parliamentary friendship group, hailed the strategic deal as “a regional harmony factor” in Asia, adding that the pact will lead to more Chinese investments in Iran and the expansion of regional contacts.
“The United States is seeking to deal blows to the economies of Iran and China, but this common enemy, itself, can strengthen the agreement between Iran and China and provide them with a strategy to overcome American mischief in the region,” the lawmaker stressed.
Iran’s enhanced ties with the East “will make the United States and the West feel endangered, and this will make them retreat in the [Vienna] talks. This will, in fact, set a deadline for the West in negotiations with Iran to clarify the state of removing the sanctions as soon as possible”.
 

International Desk

Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi’s upcoming visit to Russia will give fresh momentum to Moscow-Tehran ties.
The remark was made by the acting dean of the Faculty of World Politics of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU), Andrei A. Sidorov, in an exclusive interview with IRNA.
Documents and memorandums of understanding on expanding bilateral cooperation in different sectors are expected to be signed during the visit, he added, saying since visits by heads of state normally come under the spotlight and the Iranian president’s Moscow trip is no exception, precise planning has been done to prepare the ground for it.
The visit comes as relations between Iran and Russia are at their zenith, the faculty dean noted, adding the two countries’ leaders are hopeful to further improve the level of bilateral ties and cooperation in different sectors.
The Russian academic described the present level of political ties between the two countries as excellent, saying, however, that economic and trade relations and cooperation in, for instance, modern technologies and the aerospace sectors fail to be in proportion to the two sides’ capacities and are in need of a boost.
Sidorov regretted that previous plans to develop trade and economic ties between Russia and Iran have not gone ahead at the expected pace, and have failed to achieve progress on par with that which is witnessed in the two states’ political relations, which is the main reason for the two presidents’ likely concentration on the economic aspects of their relations.
Iran, he said, has considerable capacities and, through precise planning, can see a remarkable rise in the level of its economic relations with Russia.
Sidorov slammed as illegal and very cruel the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Iran, saying they are mainly aimed at dealing blows to the livelihoods of the Iranian people and, particularly, the country’s low-income classes, who are bearing the brunt of Washington’s pressures.
“These sanctions have been imposed without the approval of the United Nations Security Council and, thus, are in violation of international law.”
The United States, which is a permanent member of the UNSC and must be a defender of global criteria, has become the number one violator of international law and the UN Charter, and is harming international relations, Sidorov said.

Date of visit

The Russian state television channel Rossiya-1 on Sunday announced that President Vladimir Putin will host his Iranian counterpart for talks in Moscow next week as Russia seeks to help the Vienna talks on the restoration of a 2015 nuclear deal to progress, according to Reuters.
Rossiya-1 did not disclose when precisely the meeting between the two presidents would take place, nor the issues they would discuss.
“That is an important meeting and contacts must continue at the highest level,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday during a press conference on Russian diplomatic activities in 2021.
He said that the importance of the meeting lies in the necessity of implementing the notes on all issues and agendas, particularly given the change in the Iranian government.

 

Political Desk

The strategy pursued by the Islamic Republic in the Vienna talks on the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal is reaching a permanent agreement on the removal of all Western sanctions on Tehran, said an Iranian MP.
In the negotiations, Iran has never favored a temporary agreement, as the country does not deem it ideal, stressed Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Vahid Jalalzadeh in an interview with Tasnim News Agency.
He added that the United States and the E3 group of France, Britain and Germany are doing their utmost to extract maximum concessions from Iran in the talks, which is in contradiction to the Islamic Republic’s interests within the framework of the negotiations and the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The lawmaker said since the previous (seventh) round of the talks in Vienna, the Western parties have been telling Iran to settle for a temporary agreement in case of the two sides’ failure to conclude a permanent one, noting that Tehran has kept refusing the proposal from the very beginning due to its reservations about promises by the Western sides.
Iran’s agenda in the ongoing diplomatic process in Vienna is the full removal of U.S. unilateral sanctions, the MP noted, denouncing bids by Europeans and Americans to weaken the Iranian negotiating team in the talks.
He said that China and Russia hold stances similar to that of Iran in the talks.
Jalalzadeh added that under President Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi’s administration, the Iranian negotiating team has managed to resolve a series of ambiguities remaining from the previous round of talks between the Islamic Republic and the other JCPOA signatories under former president Hassan Rouhani’s government and has persuaded the other parties to acquiesce to Tehran’s demands.
He said Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a recent meeting of the committee that the talks in the Austrian capital are moving forward.
Since April, several rounds of negotiations have been held between Iran and other JCPOA parties, namely China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, to revive the deal. The eighth round of talks began last week.
The JCPOA was signed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015. Former U.S. president Donald Trump, however, pulled the country out of the deal in May 2018 and reimposed the unilateral sanctions, which were lifted following the JCPOA’s going into effect in January 2016.
 

From Page 1

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding terror groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.
Israel frequently targets military positions inside Syria, especially those of the resistance movement Hezbollah which played a key role in helping Syrian forces in the fight against terrorists.
Israel mostly keeps quiet about its attacks on Syrian territories which many view as knee-jerk reaction to the Syrian government’s increasing success in confronting terrorism.
Israel has been a main supporter of terrorist groups that have opposed the government of President Bashar al-Assad since foreign-backed militancy erupted in Syria.
The US military has stationed forces and equipment in eastern and northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
Damascus, however, says the unlawful deployment is meant to plunder the country’s resources.
Former US president Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in Syria for its oil.
After failing to oust the Syrian government with the help of its proxies and direct involvement in the conflict, the US government has now stepped up its economic war on the Arab country.
 

From Page 1

And it’s not as much a phantasmagorical wish as a real possibility. Take a look at Iran’s ballistic missiles, which have angered the US. They may not be as powerful and far-reaching as American bombs, due mainly to Iran’s self-restraining defensive strategy which limited their range and payload structure. But Iran has enough of them, and they are ‘big’ and ‘beautiful’ enough (to use Trump’s terminology), and geographically dispersed enough within Iran, to cause serious damage to the interests of the US, should it dare to attack Iran.
Or take a look at the allegedly Russian hacking capabilities, which have angered the US. Interference in electoral processes across the globe was an exclusively American hobby in the 20th century, but they have now experienced a bit of it in the 2016 election, which sent their country into political turmoil for months.
Or take a look at Chinese economic production, which have angered the US. To be sure, Chinese products in certain fields are technologically superior to their Western counterparts, evidenced in Huawei’s dominance in G5 communications infrastructure, which triggered a commercial war, culminating in one episode by arresting (or in less politically correct terms, kidnapping) one of its executives in Canada in 2018.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Chinese products are qualitatively inferior to those of the Western. The mere fact of the astonishing growth rate of China’s GDP, which threatens to surpass that of the US within a decade, made US politicians learn a lesson or two about strength in numbers.
Or take a look at the grassroots resistance activities of the Palestinians. With a deep resemblance to the operations of resistance forces inside Europe against the Nazi Wehrmacht during the Second World War, Palestinians have made it clear, time and again, that every home, every school, every Palestinian, every living soul in occupied territories is a potential threat against the tyrannical Israelis. And the Israelis live in constant fear because they can’t commit a genocide to wipe out the whole community of resistance, though certainly not for lack of trying.
These examples, and many others, clearly establish that the fight against global arrogance should be, and is, an asymmetric war, for which Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani served as a role model: He was the man who managed to unite many elements of the Iraqi community in their struggle against both the violence primarily caused by the unjustified US-led invasion of Iraq, and the mostly US-made Daesh (ISIS), thereby winning the hearts of common Iraqis for Iran, and denying the Americans an opportunity to reap the benefits of their trillion-dollar investment in their Middle East war project.
American politicians have a right to be angered at Qassem Soleimani. Instagram has a right to be angered at Soleimani, who was a symbol of a war to which they are not accustomed, but to which they need to grow accustomed, a force whose immensity they are yet to fully understand, and a will to which they have to ultimately submit.
In the meantime, one should tell them: “Die of your rage,” as God sanctioned in the Qu’ran 3:119.

*Mojtaba Koohsari is a political analyst based in Isfahan.
 

The Iranian Health Ministry announced on Sunday that the country’s daily COVID-19 fatalities and cases stood at 31 and 2,292 respectively, taking the total figures to 132,075 and 6,221,033.