Ahmadinejad warns about public ignorance of Iran's 25-year contract with China
Iran is signing a 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement with China. The content of the agreement is said to have not been disclosed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has compared the signing of this agreement to the signing of the JCPOA and has issued a warning in this regard.
News about joint meetings and conferences between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the People's Republic of China had previously been published in the media. There was talk of cooperation between the two countries. However, no news has been published about the content of this cooperation document. Now, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned against signing this cooperation document.
Some media outlets have reported that the Iranian government has approved the draft of this document. The website “Dawlat Bahar,” attributed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, published a report on his statements regarding the signing of a “new 25-year contract.”
Ahmadinejad, who is himself one of the most controversial and contentious figures in the Islamic Republic, and whose eight-year presidency has faced much criticism, has now spoken out in defense of the "interests of the nation."
Ahmadinejad, who has recently become active again in Iranian politics, met with a number of people in Gilan province on Saturday, June 27, and, without naming any country, announced the conclusion of a "new 25-year contract" with a foreign country.
He emphasized that the agreement was concluded without informing the people and claimed that the content of the agreement was against the interests of the people. Ahmadinejad said, among other things, “Any agreement that is concluded secretly and without considering the will and wishes of the Iranian people with foreign parties and is against the interests of the country and the nation is not valid and the Iranian nation will not recognize it.”
JCPOA and Cooperation Document with China
The former President of the Islamic Republic has compared this 25-year cooperation document to the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries, and stated that the representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly did not have accurate knowledge of its content when they approved the nuclear agreement.
Ahmadinejad has said: "I have heard now that they are negotiating and want to conclude a new 25-year contract with a foreign country, and no one knows."
Without naming anyone, he condemned the concealment of "truths" from the Iranian people and asked: "Are you the owner of the country that you give to others without the knowledge of the people and from the people's pocket?"
The website of the "Rah Dana" information network also published a report today, Monday, June 29, about the approval of the draft of the 25-year cooperation document between Iran and China by the Iranian government delegation.
The site claims that a similar document was approved by the Chinese government last year. According to information published by the site, China is planning to make large investments in Iran's oil and gas industries.
Without providing an explanation about its news source, the site announced that the main focus of the Iran-China agreement is on China's $280 billion investment in the aforementioned industries.
After the meeting of the Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif with Chinese officials in August last year, some media outlets reported on negotiations between the two countries on economic cooperation.
Despite the possible approval of the draft of this 25-year cooperation document, no detailed information has been released to the media about the volume of economic cooperation between the two countries and China's conditions for large-scale investment in Iran's aging oil and gas industries.
Source: DW
