Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to pay an official two-day visit to Tehran to hold talks with senior Iranian officials on strategic relations and leading regional and international developments, the spokesman for Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.
Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday that the top Chinese diplomat will arrive in Tehran on Friday and sit down for official talks with his Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.
He added that the two sides will discuss ways to promote strategic cooperation between Tehran and Beijing and the latest regional and global developments.
China maintains friendly ties with Iran and remains a party to the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), from which the US withdrew in 2018 and subsequently targeted the Iranian nation with the “toughest ever” economic sanctions.
The chart shows how Iran-China trade has been impacted by US sanctions.
Iran and China are also working to finalize the 25-year Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which was announced in a joint statement during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran in 2016.
The cooperation roadmap consists of 20 articles, covering Tehran-Beijing ties in such spheres as “political and executive cooperation,” “human and cultural relations,” “judiciary, security and defense collaboration,” as well as “regional and international” domains, according to the statement released back then.
Heading a high-ranking delegation, the Iranian foreign minister made a visit to Beijing in October and held “fruitful” talks with his Chinese counterpart on the two countries’ strategic partnership.
Zarif said that both Iran and China oppose the United States’ unilateral policies on regional and international developments and its attempts to create a “unipolar world”.