Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will travel to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua starting Sunday to strengthen relations with these three “friendly countries” from Latin America.
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Heading a large delegation, Raisi will seek to “develop economic, political and scientific cooperation,” the official Irna news agency said on Wednesday. Iran did not detail the program of this first trip of the president, elected in 2021, to Latin America, a continent where the Iranian government seeks new support on the international scene.
In recent years, Iran in particular strengthened its relations with the Venezuela of President Nicolás Maduro, that in February he received the head of Iranian diplomacy Hosein Amir-Abdollahian in Caracas, where both spoke of the “defense of their national interests against external pressures,” according to Iranian diplomacy.
The two oil-producing countries, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are subject to US sanctions that weigh on their economy.
One year ago, in June 2022, during a visit by Maduro to Tehran, both governments signed a 20-year cooperation agreement to strengthen their alliance.
“We have important cooperation projects in the fields of defense, energy, oil, gas, refineries and the petrochemical sector,” Maduro said then.
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The United States accuses Iran of circumventing sanctions by exporting oil to certain countries, including Venezuela, and of helping Caracas modernize its outdated refineries. The last visit by an Iranian president to Cuba and Venezuela dates back to 2016, when Hasan Rohani was there before participating in the UN General Assembly in New York.
In January 2007, his predecessor, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, was received in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president, defended Iran’s right to acquire nuclear weapons in February.
AFP
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