Speaking to reporters at the Mehabad Airport in Tehran on Friday afternoon after arrival back home from a tip to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, President Ebrahim Raeisi said that Iran shares a lot with the Latin American countries in terms of rejecting the hegemony-seeking countries attempts to dominate over other countries.
“Latin America is a strategic region in the world and has natural reserves and educated and thoughtful people,” the Iranian president said, adding, “This region has been standing against the hegemonic system for many years, and in the history of Latin America, there are countries that have had several decades of struggle against the current unjust order in the world. Those countries share a lot of similarities with the Islamic Revolution of Iran in their calling for independence and justice.”
The president went on to note that his administration pursues a balanced foreign policy and seeks relations with all the countries in the world.
“Anyone, anywhere in the world that wants to have a good and constructive relationship with the Islamic Republic, and considers the interests of the two countries, we will establish a good relationship with,” he pointed out.
“We signed 35 memorandums of understanding with the three countries of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba in the fields of energy, industry, mining and power plants … The basis of the work was to issue technical engineering services, export knowledge-based products, supply raw materials at reasonable prices and follow up on the creation of new markets,” the president said.
“In the field of energy, memorandums of understanding were signed in the upstream and downstream fields, and if these are implemented, they will be effective steps in continuation of the actions taken in the past two years [since he took the presidential office.]”
“We had investments in the tractor and automobile industry in Venezuela. We revived fully factories that had been shut down fully or partially for the past 9 years…Also, regarding minerals, there are good reserves in Latin America, in the field of knowledge-based work, 5 knowledge-based contracts were concluded with the private sector worth 90 million dollars,”
“A working group was formed with Cuba given their ability in the field of biotechnology…. Also, there is a good ground in the trade field and the Islamic Republic should welcome that,” Raeisi also said.
“In the field of power plant construction, MAPNA also did good work and we have valuable and exportable products, including our turbines, which are not only competitive, but the quality of some of them are even higher than the global standards. In Latin America we have customers for these products and they want a power plant and we can follow the power plant construction work there with our own engineering technical power,” the Iranian president continued.
At the end, Raeisi pointed to his meeting with Venezuelan students and youth in Caracas and said that he had found them very interested in the Islamic Revolution in Iran and opposed the unjust world system.
KI