Enemies Incensed by Iran’s Pivot to East

Date: 10 July 2020 - 21:42

News ID: ۸۰۴۸۰

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gholamreza Ansari on Friday promised to publish the details of a strategic partnership pact with China which he said would guarantee the future of Iran’s economy.
The Rouhani administration announced last week that that it has approved the draft of the 25-Year Strategic Cooperation Plan but its details have to be published.
Ansari said it comes as no surprise to see Western countries expressing concern about Tehran’s strategic cooperation with Beijing, as they are terrified that Iran would be linked to China’s global potentialities.
Some of the criticisms recently raised about the deal between Tehran and Beijing are "ridiculous”, he added.
Ansari referred to the U.S. State Department spokesperson’s comments about the deal, and said Washington feigns to sympathize with the Iranian nation while it has imposed the harshest sanctions ever against the country even at the time of the coronavirus outbreak.
"Since Iran’s relations with China are serious, and that forms the basis of economic and strategic cooperation between the two states in the 25-year document, it is quite normal for Western countries to be worried about such relations,” he noted.
Ansari said China is currently the only country in the world which is buying Iran’s oil officially.
"The policy of the U.S. and Britain—Anglo-Saxons in general—is to focus on pressuring Iran in a bid to keep it away from China and Russia,” he added.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the former chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said the West is terrified that Iran’s growing capacities are connected to the huge global potentialities of China.
"This is why they have increased their efforts to undermine Iran-China relations following the announcement of talks between the two countries on a long-term deal,” he added.
The major agreement between Iran and China was announced in a joint statement during a visit to Tehran by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2016.
The cooperation roadmap consists of 20 articles, covering Tehran-Beijing ties in political, executive cooperation, human and cultural, judiciary, security and defense, and regional and international domains, according to the statement released back then.
In a post on his Twitter account on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi wrote China is expected to emerge as the world’s leading economic power in the near future, while Iran will turn into the great power in the West Asia region.
The two sides will thus be able to "ensure common interests and resist the pressure of bullies through their complementary relations and independent from monarchical and hegemonic Western powers,” he said.
MP Abdollah Ganji, the former editor of the daily Javan, wrote on Twitter, "the critics have not read the text of the pact and that the reason they do not like it is that it has made U.S. sanctions ineffective”.