Despite years of sanctions, Switzerland has managed to maintain good trade relations with Iran. With the recent approval by the Iranian parliament of a transport agreement between the two countries, goods and passenger transport will receive a boost.
The transport agreement with Switzerland, signed on a visit to Bern in 2018 by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, envisages the complete liberalisation of the transport of goods and the removal of administrative barriers. A bilateral trade agreement has been in force since 2017.
“Collaboration in the transport sector is part of the road map Switzerland and Iran agreed upon in 2016,” a spokesman for the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) explains. The road map, he says, is the basis for deepening Swiss-Iranian relations.
The agreement is the latest example of Switzerland’s efforts to keep up its good economic and diplomatic relations with Iran despite Iran’s dubious nuclear policy and human rights situation.
“Since the nuclear deal was agreed upon in 2015, Switzerland has been trying to reactivate its economic and trade relations with Iran,” says Christian Blickenstorfer, former Swiss ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the United States and Germany, who was also political counsellor at the Swiss embassy in Iran in the 1980s. “After the nuclear deal and the gradual lifting of the sanctions, several European countries were hoping to expand their relations with Iran.”
