Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, July 13, 2020—Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, a member of the Iranian regime’s Expediency Council, shed light on the role of Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the sell-off deal with China involving the transfer of Kish Island, along with military and intelligence cooperation between the regime and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) with the Chinese government.
“The 25-year cooperation document with China went through after Khamenei sent a special message and a special messenger to China and met with the Chinese President. Prior to that, there was no determination from our government,” Moghadam explained in an interview with the state-run Asre-Iran website on Saturday.
“Today, our conditions force us to inject more hope to the society. If hopelessness prevails, there could be social riots and rebellions. In this regard relationships with China and Russia can provide paths to new opportunities,” he added. “Today, we are suffering from high inflation and unemployment, unstable prices and escalating poverty across the country, and the sanctions and the noel coronavirus have added dilemmas to our issues.”
While the mullahs’ regime refuses to publish the terms of this disgraceful agreement, published reports indicate the deal is based on unbelievable concessions regarding Kish Island and providing massive economic incentives in return for military and regional support from China.
This agreement is going through while the IRGC’s Mahan Air flights to China continued during the COVID-19 crisis that led to the transfer of this lethal illness to the city of Qom and from there to other parts of the country. This led to widespread protests over the relationship between the mullahs’ regime in Iran and China.
“Last week, the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] agreed to the extension of the existing deal to include new military elements that were proposed by the same senior figures in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the intelligence services that proposed the original deal, and this will involve complete aerial and naval military co-operation between Iran and China, with Russia also taking a key role,” a source told OilPrice.com recently.
“There is a meeting scheduled in the second week of August between the same Iranian group, and their Chinese and Russian counterparts, that will agree the remaining details but, provided that goes as planned, then as of 9 November, Sino-Russian bombers, fighters, and transport planes will have unrestricted access to Iranian air bases,” the source told OilPrice.com. “This process will begin with purpose-built dual-use facilities next to the existing airports at Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabhar, and Abadan.”
In parallel, these deployments will be accompanied by the roll-out of Chinese and Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, sources told OilPrice.com. Part of the new military co-operation will also include an exchange of personnel between Iran, China and Russia, with up to 110 senior IRGC members going for training every year in Beijing and Moscow and 110 Chinese and Russians going to Tehran for their training.
In return for these military and intelligence cooperation, the Iranian regime will be providing vast economic incentives, especially in energy, to China. Tehran has committed to sell its oil, gas and petrochemical products to China at 12 percent below the average market price, with an additional six to eight percent discount. Furthermore, China will be allowed to pay Iran with up to two years in delay and with soft currency. As a result, China will be purchasing all of Iran’s oil products at a price at least 32 percent lower than the actual price in global markets, according to a July 7 report broadcast by Radio France Internationale.
The terms must be so disgraceful and against Iran’s interests that the regime’s Majlis (parliament) members say they have not been informed of the details. This forced government spokesperson Ali Rabiei to emphasize that the agreement was discussed between Khamenei and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
