TEHRAN -- Russian and Iranian officials are working to ditch the U.S. dollar, discussing their shared interests in a meeting in Tehran on Sunday.
Russian Presidential Aide Igor Levitin, on a two-day trip in Tehran, met with Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council Ali Shamkani, and the two discussed ways to thwart Western sanctions.
During the meeting, Shamkhani expressed his satisfaction with the volume of economic cooperation between Russia and Iran, praising “the path that started to reduce the influence of the dollar in regional and international economic exchanges.”
These plans, he said, “will limit the dominance of the West over the world economy to the minimum.”
The representatives also discussed the ongoing joint project, the North-South Transport Corridor, which Shamkhani described as having a “decisive role in changing the geometry of goods transit in the region.”
The North-South Transport Corridor (NSC) is a transport network for moving freights between Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan and other countries in Asia and Europe.
The transport corridor aims to create new networks to avoid the U.S. and the West.
Levitin, for his part, expressed Moscow’s readiness to invest in Iran’s steel, oil and petrochemical industries.
The West imposed a price cap on Russian oil - the lifeblood of the Russian economy - late last year.
Shamkhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin had extensive talks on de-dollrization of trade during the Iranian official’s visit to Moscow earlier this year, according to a Wednesday report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
The hours-long, off-the-record meeting between Shamkhani and Putin early February was mostly focused on initiatives to offset the impacts of Western sanctions on Iran and Russia, including efforts to ditch the U.S. dollar from bilateral trade, it said.
The two agreed that Iran and Russia could increase the share of other major currencies, including the Chinese yuan, the Emirati dirham and the Indian rupee, in their foreign exchange reserves, it said.
The report said that the agreement was a base for Shamkhani’s following consultations in China, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq to boost Iran’s access to international trade.
Shamkhani also traveled to Abu Dhabi and Baghdad last month in visits that many said were aimed at boosting Iran’s economic ties with its two Arab neighbors.