Iran strengthens cooperation with Venezuela: “We have common interests and enemies”

President of Iran Ibrahim RaisiThis Monday in Caracas, the Venezuelan signed his counter-agreement on various agreements. Nicolás MaduroAmong these, he said, was to strengthen cooperation against “common enemies”. Two countries sanctioned by the United States.

“The relationship between Iran and Venezuela is not an ordinary diplomatic relationship, but a strategic relationship between two countries with common interests, common visions and common enemies,” Raisi said in a statement with Maduro, which he estimated at $3 billion. Bilateral trade annually and in principle, he assured that the target is to transport 10,000 million US dollars.

“In Troubled Times We Are Friends”, He added, according to an interpreter, at the Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas.

The Iranian president, who did not explicitly mention the US, He embarked on his first trip to Latin America in Venezuela, which will also take him to Cuba and Nicaragua.All countries it considers “friends”.

“Iran plays a star role as one of the most important emerging powers in the new world,” Maduro said. “Together we will be invincible!” cried the socialist leader with an image of the flags of Venezuela and Iran joining together in the background.

Maduro criticized the United States, in particular, former President Donald Trump for speaking at a recent campaign event.

“When I left (power), Venezuela was about to collapse. “We would have seized it, we would have had that oil,” Trump said. “Partial consent, relief of evidence,” Maduro replied.

Raisi and Maduro signed 25 contracts in various areas: petrochemicals, mining, health, educationAmong other things, without disclosing more details about these deals.

“Our cooperation with these countries has grown in the last two years,” Raisi, who was elected in 2021, said in Tehran before starting his five-day tour of Latin America. “This trip will be a turning point.”

Iran is one of Maduro’s key international alliesBoth countries, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), are the subject of US financial sanctions that seek to hit their economies.

In 2020, Iran sent 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and supplies to Venezuela to restart its refineries amid severe fuel shortages amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Maduro received the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdullahian, in Caracas in February and traveled to Tehran in June 2022 to sign a 20-year cooperation agreement to strengthen their “alliance”.

The last visit of an Iranian president to Cuba and Venezuela dates back to 2016. When Hassan Rouhani was there before attending the UN General Assembly in New York. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was welcomed in Nicaragua in January 2007.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega defended Iran’s right to acquire nuclear weapons in February.

With information from AFP

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