TEHRAN – The Armenian Parliament speaker has said that his country is ready to open a consulate in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz. 

Alen Simonyan, the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, who has traveled to Tehran at the invitation of the speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, met with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Thursday evening.

Simonyan said the establishment of the consulate general of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Armenia’s Syunik Province is a turning point in the relations between the two countries and announced Armenia’s readiness to establish its consulate general in Tabriz, according to the Iranian foreign ministry.

In this meeting, Amir Abdollahian called Armenia “an important friend and neighbor of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Citing high-level political relations between the two countries, Amir Abdollahian stressed the need to develop economic cooperation and take advantage of the two countries’ diverse capacities. He expressed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s readiness to increase trade volume with Armenia to $1 billion a year.

Amir Abdollahian also referred to Iran’s principled position to support the territorial integrity of the region and stressed the unchangeability of international borders and the need to respect the sovereignty of the regional countries.