Italian industry minister says plans to visit Iran early next year

Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda said he plans to travel to Tehran in early 2017 for economic talks with senior Iranian officials.

According to Tasnim news agency, Calenda said he would continue to work to strengthen trade ties, and travel to Iran in early 2017 along with Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan.

"The central issue is to make financing channels work fully, so that all the good projects we have can become reality," he said at a trade fair in Rome for Iranian companies.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Calenda said it was too early to say how the picture could change under Trump's leadership.

"I think there is the absolute necessity to implement the (nuclear) agreement and move forward on that way".

He was referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that Iran and the 5+1 group (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) reached in July 2015 and implemented it in January 2016.

In a speech to the pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in March, Trump declared that his "number-one priority” would be to "dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran."

After Trump's winning the election, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Iran expects the new US administration respect the nuclear deal.

ME