BRASILIA, Jan 8 (NNN-Prensa Latina) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro assured that his country will maintain commercial relations with Iran despite the increase in tensions between that nation and the United States.
‘We trade with Iran, and we will continue that trade,’ the president told the press at his official residence in this capital, where he also made it clear that ‘Brazil repudiates terrorism anywhere in the world.’
Iran is Brazil’s main trading partner in the Middle East and, according to data from the Ministry of Economy, in 2018 its exports to that nation amounted to 2.26 billion dollars, with particular emphasis on agricultural products such as meat, soy and corn.
The rise in tensions between the United States and Iran due to the assassination in Baghdad on Jan 3 of the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Qasem Soleimani, in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump, has spilled over to other countries.
The Brazilian Foreign Ministry reported that the Iranian government summoned its chargé d’affaires in Tehran to discuss the official statements of the Bolsonaro government following the death of Soleimani, an action it supported as part of the Trump administration’s policy ‘in its fight against terror’.
