Iran's President Presents 20-Year Agreement Draft To Putin

The clashes in the Wednesday session were the second time in less than a month that angry shareholders show outburst and attack officials following months of uncertainty and losses in the Iranian stock market, hyped by the government which lured thousands of investors.

In late December, violent clashes were reported when one of the shareholders wanted to disrupt a general assembly session of the stock exchange market in the city of Kerman.

Shareholders have held a number of protestsand also announced plans to hold more demonstrations outside the Securities and Exchange Organization in Tehran to denounce the decline in stock prices and devaluation of their capital.

Earlier on Saturday, TEDPIX, the main index of Tehran Stock Exchange, lost 11,630 points to reach 1.322 million as 4.728 billion securities worth 27.68 trillion rials (about $93 million) were traded.

The drop continued in the following days while many people and analysts attribute the decline to uncertainties about the fate of current nuclear talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna.

Firefighters gathered in front of Tehran city hall on Wednesday in protest to the indifference of authorities to their problems.

They also urged the resignation of Tehran’s Fire Department chief and vowed to continue similar rallies until their demands are met.

Last week, thousands of teachers held their fourth round of nationwide protests in more than 50 Iranian cities to demand better salaries and the release of their colleagues detained in earlier demonstrations.

Authorities, who have shown little interest in raising salaries, arrested Mohammad Taghi Fallahi, the head of Iran’s teachers’ union to serve his six-month sentence for organizing the protests.

Workers and employees from various economic sectors are holding regular protest rallies or strikes to demand better work conditions and salaries.

Last week, hundreds of staff members from Iran’s hardliner judiciary department took to the streets in several cities, in what was an unprecedented development.

Food prices have risen by more than 60 percent in recent months, on top of high inflation in the previous three years. Government figures show that prices for 83 percent of basic food staples have reached a critical level. People living on salaries have cut back on nutritious food, such as meat, fruits and dairy products.

Rosen, who arrived in Vienna on Wednesday, says he will hold his protestfor the freedom of the dozens of hostages held unjustly by the Iranian regime, asking the world to “prioritize their release”. He spend 444 days in captivity in the US embassy in Tehran from November 1878 to January 1980.

Rosen has expressed hope his move can stop other countries from reaching a deal with Iran until the hostages are released.

Another journalist and rights activist Jamshid Barzegar says he’s going to join Rosen’s sit-in in Vienna to draw attention to hostages and all political prisoners held by Tehran.

Barzegar said in a tweet that he is joining the hunger strike also to protest the Islamic Republic's “murder of poet Baktash Abtin,”who died of Covid-19 complications following days of medically induced coma after he was denied timely treatment by officials at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

The poet and writer was sentenced to six years in prison in May 2019 for his writings.

Since the 1979 revolution the Islamic Republic has arrested and jailed many foreigners on vague and trumped-up charges to use them as bargaining chips against Western countries.

Before leaving Tehran for Moscow Wednesday morning, Raisi expressed hope that his visit could be a “turning point” in bilateral relations.

“Undoubtedly, we have good relations with all of our neighbors, particularly Russia, and considering the bilateral political, economic, and trade relations, this trip can be a turning point in our cooperation with Russia,” he said.

“The Iran-Russia collaboration in the region certainly creates security and will prevent unilateralism,” the Iranian president said.

Raisi is scheduled to hold a meeting with President Putin and deliver a speech at a plenary session of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament during his trip.

Rejecting speculations that Raisi is going to Russia to ink the proposed 20-year agreement, Iran’s ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali has said the two presidents may discuss and agree on different issues but signing deals is not on the agenda of the visit.

On Tuesday, the Russian Pacific Fleet announced it will take part in joint naval war games with Iran and China in without announcing the exact date and location for the drills.

Earlier in the week, Iran’s former ambassador to Russia said increasing banking cooperation between Tehran and Moscow can be used to circumvent United States’ sanctions.

"In the new world order, a triangle consisting of three powers – Iran, Russia, and China – has formed in Asia. This new arrangement heralds the end of the inequitable hegemony of the United States and the West," Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, spokesman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian parliament, said Wednesday.

In his interview with the government news agency IRNA, published as President Ebrahim Raisi was preparing to leave Tehran for an official visit to Moscow, Abbaszadeh-Meshkini also claimed that the Raisi administration has succeeded in turning Tehran into "the center of political and diplomatic consultations and arrangements in the region, Asia, and the world."

Khamenei's advisor Ali-Akbar Velayati also claimed in a recent interview that Iran has turned into a world power equal to Russia and China.

Raisi's visit to Moscow is taking place in an atmosphere of heightened public debateover Iran's now official policy of aligning with Russia and China against the West despite the once promoted "Neither East, Nor West" slogan of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The slogan has been inscribed over the entrance of the foreign ministry building in central Tehran.

Hardliners claim that closer economic and political relations with the East and Asian countries, which Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has promulgated with the catchphrase "Looking East", will help Iran's development and strengthen it against Western powers, particularly the United States. Since 2018, and Khamenei's advocation of the policy, "Looking East" has become one of the centerpieces of a 'revolutionary economy' which hardliners have been hard at work to theorize and promote.

Hardliners accuse the former moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, and his reformist allies of sacrificing the potentials of expansion of relations with the East, Russia in particular, during the eight years of his presidency in favor of relations with Europe and the US.

In a note entitled "Expansion of Foundations of National Interests" Wednesday, Javan newspaper which is affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) alleged that Rouhani knowingly sabotaged relations with Moscow, cold-shouldered some of Putin's initiatives, and that his government never acted on the 15 cooperation agreements signed during his visit to Moscow in 2017.

"[President] Ebrahim Raisi's visit to Russia … can once again draw Tehran-Moscow relations out of a state of suspension and endow it with a strategic quality," Javan said of the importance of Raisi's visit.

Insisting that the Pentagon and liberals at home are worried about the visit, Javan added that "political conjunction with Russia and China" will elevate relations with the two Eastern powers from "seasonal and occasional" to a strategic level. "These developments in the Tehran-Beijing-Moscow axis will fundamentally change security arrangements in the region," Javan wrote.

In another article Wednesday, Javan said important economic agreements over a bilateral monetary arrangement to eliminate the need for going through the international banking system would be discussed with Russian officials.

Javan claimed that Raisi's visit, a few days after Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian's visit to Beijing, has born "tangible results in economic, political and social arenas" in the past few months and predicted that stronger relations with Russia will bear significant results in the process of the Vienna nuclear talks to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and in neutralizing US sanctions.