Indian Foreign Minister to Visit Tehran This Week

Date: 07 September 2020 - 22:06

News ID: ۸۲۵۵۶

NEW DELHI (Dispatches) -- India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will make a stopover in Iran this week as part of his key Moscow visit.
Jaishankar will be visiting Moscow for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which includes India, Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran is an observer member of the grouping.
This will be the second time any top Indian minister is visiting Iran within a week. Defense minister Rajnath Singh visited Iran over the weekend while coming from Russia and met with Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami.
"Had a very fruitful meeting with Iranian defense minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami in Tehran. We discussed regional security issues including Afghanistan and the issues of bilateral cooperation,” he said in a tweet.
"Both the Defense Ministers discussed ways to take forward bilateral cooperation and exchanged views on regional security issues, including peace and stability in Afghanistan,” Singh’s office said in a separate tweet.
The meeting between the two ministers took place in a "cordial and warm atmosphere,” it said, adding that they emphasized upon the age-old cultural, linguistic and civilizational ties between India and Iran.
Singh’s visit came a day after he voiced India’s deep concern about the situation in the Persian Gulf and called upon the countries in the region to resolve their differences through dialogue based on mutual respect.
The high-level visits by India to Iran are considered as a major reach-out by New Delhi to a country it considers part of its extended neighborhood. Iran plays an important role in India’s connectivity project via Chabahar port that provides it link to Afghanistan and wider Central Asian region.
India-Iran commercial ties were traditionally dominated by Indian import of Iranian crude oil. In 2018-19 India imported $12.11 billion worth of crude oil from Iran.
However, India has suspended importing crude from Iran since May 2019 after the U.S. asked it to cut imports from Iran down to "zero” by November 2019 or face sanctions.