CARACAS, Venezuela — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met with Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Monday, the first stop on Raisi’s tour of Latin America this week which will also include meetings in Cuba and Nicaragua.
Following a private meeting with Maduro, Raisi asserted in a joint press conference that Iran and Venezuela do not have ordinary relations, but rather, a “strategic relation” with “common interests, views,” and “enemies,” alluding to but not overtly mentioning the United States.
The encounter took place one year after Maduro’s official visit to Tehran, where the socialist dictator signed a 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran. The authoritarian regimes maintain close ties established during the rule of Venezuela’s late dictator Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).
In Caracas, Raisi and his delegation signed several agreements with the Maduro regime on technology, energy, insurance, maritime transportation, education, agriculture, medicine, culture, and mining. The agreements included the establishment of an “Iranian technology office” on Venezuelan soil, new shipping lanes between the two countries, and the export of frozen meat and livestock to Iran.
Additionally, Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji and his Venezuelan counterpart Pedro Tellechea signed contracts to develop oil fields and restore Venezuela’s lost refining and petrochemical production capabilities.
Over the past year, Iran has signed several multimillion-dollar contracts with the Maduro regime to have the Islamist regime repair and revamp Venezuela’s rundown oil refinery complex after more than two decades of socialist mismanagement left them in ruins. The agreements signed allow Iran to refine its own oil in Venezuela’s refineries.
The Islamic regime supplied oil to Maduro to help offset Venezuela’s severe gasoline shortages throughout 2020 and has reportedly helped the Maduro regime sell its sanctioned oil through the use of an international oil smuggling network.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, thanks to the blessings of the Islamic Revolution, the pure blood of the martyrs, and the resistance of the Iranian people, has been able to turn the pressures and sanctions into opportunities, and in this way has provided various capacities that are ready to be shared with the resilient nation of Venezuela,” Raisi stated during the joint press conference with Maduro.
“Iran is playing a stellar role as one of the most important emerging powers in the new world,” Maduro claimed. “Together we will be invincible!” he added, awarding Raisi with the Venezuelan Medal of Honor.
Raisi explained that bilateral trade volume has increased from $600 million in 2021 to more than $3 billion today, adding that both regimes plan to increase it first to $10 billion and then to $20 billion, without specifying a deadline for those alleged goals.
“I hope that by implementing these documents, we will be able to take a big step in improving the level of relations between the two countries,” Raisi continued.
Prior to the meeting and joint press conference, the Maduro regime invited Raisi to visit Venezuela’s National Pantheon in Caracas to lay a wreath at the mausoleum of Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar. Maduro, who paid tribute to Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani following the American operation that eliminated him from the battlefield, announced that a bust of Soleinmani will soon be presented and installed in the Simón Bolívar Mausoleum.
Raisi is expected to arrive in Nicaragua on Tuesday, ending his Latin American tour in Cuba on Wednesday.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.