Ali-Akbar Ahmadian met with Igor Levitin, who is also Russia’s State Council Secretary, in the capital Tehran on Tuesday to discuss bilateral ties and agreements.
During the meeting, Ahmadian stressed that the administration of President Ebrahim Raiesi pays special attention to the promotion of relations with the country’s neighbors, particularly Russia.
He added that the Iranian administration also supports regional initiatives as well as bilateral and multilateral cooperation as an effective approach to secure the national interests of the two countries.
The SNSC chief further pointed to global developments and their impact on geopolitical and geo-strategic equations, saying these circumstances require that two countries operationalize all routes of the North-South Transit Corridor, the western branch, the sea route and the eastern branch as soon as possible.
Among the most important priorities of Iran in relations with Russia, the senior Iranian official said, is to speed up the implementation of the agreed projects, including the completion of the North-South Corridor and the signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) in the field of oil and gas.
Ahmadian further hailed as “a giant step” the agreement on the construction of the Rasht-Astara railway, a strategic transport corridor that connects the existing railways of the two countries and Azerbaijan, which was signed earlier this year in May, saying it will consolidate economic relations and further contribute to the promotion of the country’s economy.
Levitin, for his part, congratulated Ahmadian on his appointment as the SNSC secretary and presented a report on the latest developments related to commercial relations, and banking and joint economic projects between the two nations.
The government of the Russian Federation will use its utmost efforts to implement the agreements signed between the two countries as quickly as possible and remove the existing barriers to their implementation, he said, while expressing satisfaction with the progress in the implementation of the agreements between the two countries.
He further stated that the broad cooperation between Tehran and Moscow in recent years is a result of the will of the leaders of the two countries.
The scheduled implementation of the agreements between the presidents of the two countries, including in the fields of transportation and transit, energy, medicine and science, will not only be a significant leap in enhancing the level of economic relations between the two countries but also will have a very positive and important effect on the development of the transit and commercial potentiality and capabilities in the region, he said.
