Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed Moscow’s readiness to develop relations with Tehran in his first conversation with Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, reports Anadolu.
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Lavrov expressed his condolences to Kani over the deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash.
Kani thanked the Russian authorities for their attention and support, as well as “sincere sympathy and empathy for the Iranian people, who suffered this ordeal.”
The parties confirmed their firm determination to unconditionally continue the course chosen by the leaders of the two countries in the direction of forming a strategic partnership between Russia and Iran and their readiness to implement all existing agreements and projects in various fields.
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Governor of East Azerbaijan Malik Rehmati and leader of Friday prayers in the city of Tabriz, Imam Ayatollah Al-Hashem, crashed on Sunday while returning from a ceremony to open a dam on the border with Azerbaijan . It was later confirmed that there were no survivors in the accident.