He made the announcement on Monday at a meeting with a delegation of German state officials and executives of industries and businesses headed by Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel on their visit to Tehran.
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The comments came after Iran said its ballistic missile program was not connected to the UN Security Council resolution adopted that endorses its July 14 nuclear accord with world powers. Last year, German exports to Iran rose to 2.4 billion euros in anticipation that the sanctions might be eased, but German industry associations have said they could quadruple to 10 billion within a few years.
The Iranian president further underscored the need for expansion of ties between Tehran and Berlin in various fields of research, academics, tourism, economy, culture and politics, maintaining that closer ties between the two sides can bring together countries in the Middle East and Europe.
German economic circles hope to create new incentives for economic cooperation with Iran during Gabriel’s visit to Tehran. However, the agreement between Iran and six world powers including Germany has opened the prospect that the sanctions will be removed.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Gabriel referred to the numerous representatives of German trade giants accompanying him in the trip to Iran, saying, “Germany’s trade community is willing to return to Iran and have cooperation with Iranian partners”.
“You can’t have a good economic relationship with Germany in the long-term if we don’t discuss such issues too and try to move them along”, Gabriel told a gathering of German and Iranian business people in Tehran. But during a 20-minute speech he also highlighted other differences with Iran, including human rights, women’s standing in society, competition law and efforts to combat corruption. On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Israeli in a speech as a “terrorist, baby-killer government”.
Such spectacles are cited by Iran’s opponents as reasons for not doing business in Tehran, but worldwide trade is expected to boom if the nuclear deal is successfully implemented. Iran has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves and the second in gas, meaning it has the biggest combined energy deposits.
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Iran once produced more oil than Saudi Arabia and was able to extract more than 6 million barrels per day in the 1970s, but its output has fallen below 4 million bpd over the past decade due to the sanctions and under-investment.
