Venezuela seeks to consolidate "strategic alliance" with Iran

Venezuela's foreign minister, Felix Plasencia, said on Wednesday that it is important for the country to consolidate the "strategic alliance" of cooperation it maintains with Iran in air connections, trade, food, technology and food.

"Caracas and Tehran have an immense future of building work," the foreign minister said, according to a press release that reported that Plasencia held a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hosein Amir Abdolahian. Venezuela reiterated its commitment to forge a "successful path" for bilateral trade. 

The Iranian Foreign Minister also proposed sending a delegation from his government to Venezuela with the intention of managing "between both parties a road map for bilateral cooperation over the next four years, whose potential agreements could be signed later in Iran".

Plasencia added that a common work agenda could be coordinated in view of the multilateral meetings that will take place at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York and the meeting of foreign ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade. 

Iran is one of the main allies of Nicolás Maduro's government and their ties became even closer in 2020, when Venezuela faced a severe gasoline shortage and the Venezuelan government turned to the Persian nation to buy fuel.

On 23 June, Maduro held a telephone conversation with Iran's president-elect, the ultraconservative cleric and head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, in which he said they agreed to strengthen ties between the countries. 

"I had a telephone conversation with Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, president-elect of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We agreed to strengthen our ties of brotherhood and cooperation to advance in the joint struggle against imperial aggressions against our peoples," Maduro wrote on his Twitter account.