The Government Vice President Evangelos Venizelos recently visited Tehran in an effort to develop financial and trade relations with Iran. To that end he met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Secretary of the Security Council Ali Shamkhani and the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
In his meetings with Iranian officials Mr. Venizelos made it clear that after the agreement of the P5+1 (the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany) and Iran regarding the relaxation of certain sanctions, Athens would pursue a closer financial relationship with Iran, in coordination with the EU and USA.
The three main areas of trade where small and medium-sized businesses in Greece could further develop are medication, food and clothing. These trade areas are not amongst the “hardcore” sanctions, meaning that Greece could take advantage of it and help towards covering the 600 million euro deficit attributed to oil imports between 2010 and 2012.
Likewise, Iran has a lot to gain from developing business ties with Greece, as part of its overall plan to create a strategic relationship with the EU. Mr. Venizelos commented that “thanks to our strong cultural, sentimental and historic ties, we have the ability and will to take advantage, to the greatest extent, of our current bilateral relations”.
President Rouhani noted that Iran and the EU have many mutual strategic interests in energy, transport, security and tackling terrorism and extremis and expressed his belief that the tradition and historic relations of the two sides would be reinvigorated.
