Wei Fenghe, the Chinese defense minister, arrived in Tehran today for meetings with senior offiicers in the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic.
The visit comes three months after the two governments announced that a widely-decried 25-year cooperation agreement had reached its "implementation phase" - despite having not been ratified by the Iranian parliament as it should have been.
The final text of the deal has been kept hidden from both Iranian and Chinese citizens but a leaked draft showed major concessions made by Tehran to the Chinese state. General Wei is the highest-level Chinese official to have come to Iran on official business since then.
Recently Majid Reza Hariri, chairman of the Iran-China Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industries, told Iranian media the deal's full implementation was, predictably, being delayed by the failure to reach a new nuclear deal in Vienna.
Though the remaining disputes are thought to be mostly between the US and Iran, China is another of the parties with a seat at the table. "Iran-China trade was supposed to reach $60 billion a year," Hariri said, "but due to sanctions we haven't reached half of that."
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