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The new forward flight of Rome with Tehran, which can cost Italian companies dearly

3 years ago babelfish

From the Twitter account of the embassy of Italy in Iran we learn that on 8 December, Ambassador Perrone met Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian Parliament and possible next candidate for the presidency of the Islamic Republic in 2021. In the tweet, the Embassy of Italy thanks for the meeting which, he reports, was characterized by a friendly spirit and a desire to increase bilateral collaboration.

In a tweet, however, it is not possible to tell who Qalibaf is. First, the current speaker of the Iranian parliament was the mayor of Tehran, but above all a Pasdaran commander and manager director of the main holding of the Revolutionary Guards, Khatam al-Anbia , which controls a large part of the national economy. It is not even necessary to report the political positions of Qalibaf. Here it is enough to know that, while from Rome the Farnesina supports the Abrahamic Agreements, Qalibaf attacked them severely, branding them as a betrayal of Islam.

Now let's see what the Iranian press reported about the meeting. According to Tasnim News , Qalibaf complained to the Italian ambassador about the recent statement from the E3 group (France, Germany and Great Britain), in which concern was expressed about the recent law of the Iranian parliament asking to increase the level of enrichment of uranium and to suspend inspections by IAEA technicians at Iranian nuclear sites.

Qalibaf rejected the accusations of the E3 group and asked Italy to "not allow the three European countries to adopt positions for all of Europe". Apparently, it seems that Tehran sees Italy as the weak link in Europe, on the basis of what Rouhani said in 2013 when, receiving the then foreign minister, Emma Bonino, said that Tehran saw Italy as the "gateway to 'entrance to Europe ”.

The meeting between Perrone and Qalibaf comes a few hours after the videoconference between the secretary general of the Farnesina Elisabetta Belloni and the Iranian deputy foreign minister Araghchi. Also in this case, the main topics were bilateral relations, nuclear power and only at the end the issue of human rights. It is quite likely that the meeting between Perrone and Qalibaf was the natural continuation of the videoconference between Belloni and Araghchi.

That the issue of human rights was at the bottom of Belloni's agenda is not surprising. A worldwide campaign is underway to save the life of medical researcher Ahmadreza Djalali, unjustly sentenced to death on the false accusation of espionage, in reality for not wanting to become an Iranian intelligence agent in Europe. We want to believe that the topic has entered the conversation anyway, also because – at least for once – the Farnesina has published an official statement to express concern about the possible imminent execution of Djalali. Given the official statement , among the messages of the Italian ambassador to Tehran there should have been that of officially expressing the dissatisfaction of the head of the Farnesina with the affair. So, at least publicly, it wasn't.

If he forgot human rights, Ambassador Perrone obviously remembered the economic relations. In fact, on 20 November a business forum was held between Italy and Iran , also promoted by the Italian embassy in Tehran, with the participation of over 130 economic representatives of Italian small and medium-sized enterprises.

Once again, as in 2015, Rome seems to accelerate times, to try to grab a space to promote privileged relations with Tehran, probably assuming that under the Biden presidency the doors of the nuclear agreement will reopen and the sanctions imposed will be suspended. by Trump. Once again, however, Rome risks taking the longest step, not only because the JCPOA was a failure and history has moved on – and Biden will also have to take this into account – but also because when the doors to Tehran had been left totally wide open by Obama, the Iranian El Dorado turned out to be a fiasco, with dozens of national companies that risked ending up under American sanctions, for having unwittingly found themselves doing business with companies closely linked with the Pasdaran …

The post Rome's new forward flight with Tehran, which can cost Italian companies dearly appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-nuova-fuga-in-avanti-di-roma-con-teheran-che-puo-costare-cara-alle-imprese-italiane/ on Thu, 10 Dec 2020 04:53:00 +0000.