TEHRAN -- Iran and Turkey signed eight agreements after the meetings concluded, one of which was a 25-year cooperation accord.
Earlier President Ebrahim Raisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a joint press conference, during which they said that they aimed to take bilateral trade to an all-time high of $30 billion.
Iran has been eyeing a long-term cooperation agreement with neighboring Turkey for some time. The document was initially supposed to be signed during a planned Erdogan visit to Tehran in November 2021, but it did not materialize.
The two countries have been major trade partners for years, but bilateral trade has taken a serious hit in recent years due to U.S. sanctions on Iran and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The total volume of bilateral trade peaked at $21 billion in 2012, but dropped to a low of $1 billion in 2020. It had rebounded to $5.5 billion by the end of 2021, and the Raisi administration – which has focused on a regional diplomacy initiative – wants to significantly boost it despite U.S. sanctions.
On Tuesday, they agreed to start negotiations on a new gas exports deal that will allow increased supply of natural gas from Iran to Turkey for a period of 25 years starting in 2026.