Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday hailed the “very close” relationship his government has formed with Russia and touted a burgeoning alliance that Western powers regard as the nucleus of a growing threat in the Middle East.
“I’m glad that our relations are developing every year,” Rouhani said while hosting the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament in Tehran. “Relations between our governments are very close.”
Rouhani divided his time Monday between hosting Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin and celebrating Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology. The officials, meeting within days of the latest chemical weapons attack in Syria, discussed how to deepen foreign policy and economic cooperation.
The talks took place as President Trump mulls a withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and military strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, which relies heavily on Iranian and Russian support to survive an ongoing civil war.
“Close relations and cooperation between Iran and Russia on Syria and peace and security in the region has been very effective and we should continue cooperation until the complete establishment of security to Syria and the region,” Rouhani said, according to state-run media.
In Moscow, meanwhile, officials looked with anticipation to a summer of “visa-free” tourism from Iran, which the United States has designated one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism.
“In 2018, we expect tourism flow from Iran to increase,” Oleg Safonov, head of the Russian Tourism Agency, told state-run media on Monday. “There is an intergovernmental agreement between our countries on visa-free tourist trips for groups. … Russians may come to Iran without visas, and we have significantly eased visa regime.”
Those pronouncements came one day after Iran threatened to jump-start its nuclear weapons program if Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal in May. “If they violate the deal, they will witness its results in less than one week,” Rouhani said Monday, according to FARS, a semiofficial Iranian outlet.
