⚡️🇮🇷🇺🇳 — Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attended the 27th informal ECO Council of Ministers meeting in New York on Friday, chaired by Pakistan, saying it was taking place amid growing international uncertainty and fragmentation and what he described as increasing pressure on international law and international humanitarian law from aggressive actions. Despite Iran’s “firm commitment to diplomacy and negotiations,” he said the country had been subjected to what he described as “illegal, aggressive and terrorist” actions by the United States and Israel over the past two years, causing material and moral losses including the deaths of Iran’s Supreme Leader, senior military commanders and more than 4,000 people, among them 168 schoolchildren in Minab, as well as damage to hospitals, civilian airports, historic sites and other infrastructure. He added that Iran’s population and armed forces had resisted the attacks and that none of what he described as the aggressors’ objectives had been achieved — IRNA.

➡️ Araghchi said ECO could play a greater role in economic and trade cooperation, regional connectivity and sustainable development, citing the resumption of ministerial meetings suspended for years, including those on trade, internal affairs and the environment, alongside a five-year mining cooperation roadmap, a 10-year strategy for sustainable and resilient regional transport, and the launch of the process to revise the ECO Trade Agreement (ECOTA). He called for the ECO Vision for the coming decade to be finalized for review and approval at the 18th ECO Summit in Tehran, with its feasibility, measurability and effective implementation ensured, and linked the expansion of transport corridors and their growing connections to major freight and logistics hubs, including those connected to China, to a stronger role for the region in international trade and transit.

He further cited expanding regional tourism and intra-regional trade as signs of gradual economic integration, while identifying energy, human resources, agriculture, industry and the environment as continuing priorities and stressing the need to sustain the process and use the organization’s capacities to advance members’ shared objectives.

➡️ Araghchi said Iran would host the 18th ECO Summit in Tehran on December 3–4, 2026, stating that participation by member-state leaders could send “an appropriate message” to the people of the region and the international community. He concluded by calling for stronger regional and multilateral cooperation to advance global peace, security and prosperity and for an end to unilateral coercive measures and what he described as aggression contributing to instability and insecurity.

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