Kazakhstan President arrives in Tehran to discuss bilateral ties

Tokayev’s plane landed at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport on Sunday and senior Iranian officials warmly received the Kazak president upon arrival.

Tokayev, who came to Iran at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart, was later welcomed by Raeisi at Saad Abad palace in Tehran, with reports saying high-level bilateral meetings are to be held during the visit and a number of inter-governmental documents will be signed.

Kazakhstan, a major oil and uranium producer, is part of the China-led eight-member bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which also includes Iran, Russia, India, and Pakistan.

Last year, during a meeting between Raeisi and his Kazakh counterpart on the sidelines of a SCO summit in Tajikistan, the two sides agreed to strengthen bilateral relations, including cooperation to better facilitate rail freight transport which would speed up the transit of goods between the two nations.

The latest visit comes on the heels of various official trips to Iran by the world’s high-profile leaders aiming to expand ties with Tehran in the face of Western unilateralism and its sanctions policy.

On Wednesday, Iran officially welcomed Turkmenistan’s new President Serdar Berdimuhamedow who, along with President Raeisi, oversaw the signing of a raft of documents for cooperation on economy, trade, transportation, investment, new technologies, environment, sports, energy, judiciary, education, research, and tourism.

A day earlier, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari announced after talks with Iranian officials in Tehran, that the two neighbors had come closer to resolving one of the major obstacles in the expansion of bilateral trade through operationalizing the barter trade mechanism.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has hailed the Iranian government’s policy of expanding relations with neighbors as a good policy.