 Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to our very special conversation on Iran. It's my great pleasure to welcome His Excellency for Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, His Excellency Javad Tzarif. Minister, a warm welcome. Thank you very much. Good to be with you. Thank you, sir. And before we will start, Excellency, allow me to share our conglolence with the recent deaths of your former President Rafsanjani. As we all know, he was highly praised by many Iranians, but from people across the world for his efforts to restore Iran in 1980. Excellency, in a few months you will have elections in Iran. And what does this election mean for Iran's trajectory, as well as for the global community gathered here with us in Davos? First of all, let me thank you for your expressions of sympathy. We have indeed lost a great leader, and the world has lost a great voice for reason and for rationality. And I think he will be seriously missed. As for our election, it's too early to say the dynamics of domestic politics in Iran are rather interesting. We do not allow actual campaigning to start before April in vain hope of preventing a long political year. But we have already started the political year last year with the parliamentary election and this year with the presidential election. We believe what is important is for the Iranian people to have the possibility of choosing the future. And I believe that would be very much important for the region and the world. Iran's policy, nevertheless, on the international scene will see a continuity regardless of the outcome of the election. And that is Iran, because of its geographic location, is interested in stability and tranquility in the region. And I believe that is an element in our policy that will continue regardless of who is elected. Thank you, Minister. Before we move to the foreign policy questions, now we have one last domestic question. I read in some newspapers that President Rouhani has implemented an Iranian citizen rights charter. And so my question is, what does this charter mean for the political dissent inside your country facing the upcoming elections? Well, President Rouhani made a promise when he was campaigning that he will introduce, as you said, a charter of citizens rights. The Constitution of Iran has a chapter, the chapter three of the Constitution of Iran deals with human rights. But he wanted to emphasize and highlight the importance of the rights of the citizenry. He presented a first draft of this, within the hundred years after his inauguration. And the draft went through a lot of public discourse in Iran. And finally, it was finalized and was presented by President Rouhani last month. I think there is a genuine political debate in Iran that has taken place. It is different from the type of political debate that takes place in the West, but it represents the possibility for the populace to engage in the determination of their future. I think this charter highlights those possibilities for the general public in Iran. And I think in that it shows a priority of this government. I believe that actually if you look at Iran and if you look at how Iran has been the subject of a lot of pressure from outside, but it has been able to stand up, for instance, sanctions. Iran has been the subject of probably the most, as former Secretary Clinton liked to call it, crippling sanctions, probably by any country against another country. But we were able to withstand that. That's because we rely on our people. So however you want to look at it, the fact that the Iranian people are very much participating in the determination of their future is an important ingredient of our stability. And that is why the government, even from the very self-interest perspective, must recognize and protect the rights of the citizenry. Of course, not everything is exactly how we want it to be, but we are moving in the right direction. And I think through cooperation and coordination and through greater understanding between various elements of the government and of the polity, we can move this agenda forward. Thank you, Minister. And as promised now, let's move to the foreign policy question. You will head together with Russia and Turkey in the next week to Astana, to the Syria talks. And Syria is certainly top of mind of everyone engaged in the Middle East and Africa area. And you have been engaged, I cannot talk about everything, but you have been engaged over the morning and we are very grateful on this topic as well. So can you share with us what should be the optimal outcome of such a meeting heading to next week? For the past three and a half years that have been in office, we have always insisted that we should not try to prejudge the outcome of political negotiations before we even start political negotiations. What is important is for everybody to recognize that there is no military solution in Syria. And once you reach that recognition, reach that understanding, try to put an end to the bloodshed and move forward with other aspects, including dialogue among the Syrians. For the past three and a half years that I have tried to pursue this, there has been attempts time and again. And each time we try to avoid this, as Stefan Demestura said this morning, the elephant in the room, the future of President Assad prevented us from engaging in a serious effort to resolve the problem. Whereas the future of President Assad is something that Syrian people have to determine. What we need to do at the international level is to help the Syrians reach the stage of starting to talk to each other. And I believe the first step has been taken by Iran, Russia, and Turkey in bringing about a cessation of hostilities that has held for over a month. And that is the best record that is available in the past five unfortunate years of Syrian conflict. We hope that in Astana, this can be expanded. We hope that the ceasefire could incorporate all of Syria. Of course, the recognized terrorist organizations that is Daesh, ISIS, and Nusra are excluded from the ceasefire. But we hope that all the parties that signed the ceasefire agreement, that is the armed opposition groups that are operating inside Syria as well as the Syrian government, will come to Astana with a view to ending, for a longer term, the hostilities and also starting a political process. This is an ambitious project to get the opposition and the government in the same city and in the same, hopefully, under the same roof to start discussing about widening the ceasefire, widening the cessation of hostilities, providing greater humanitarian access because right now the humanitarian situation inside Syria is in a very dire situation. And also allowing the Syrian people to have some semblance of normalcy, that is to distance the armed groups from the cities, to allow the Syrians to have safe passage from one city to another so that they could continue with their lives as the political groups and the armed groups start to engage in a negotiated settlement. Of course, if they can agree on a platform of general principles, that is, for instance, the principle of unity of Syria, the principle of territorial integrity of Syria, the principle of inclusive government of Syria, if they can start by agreeing on these principles, then they have taken another important step. But we have to be modest in our aspirations for this meeting and hope that we can at least strengthen this cessation of hostilities expanded and include some humanitarian elements in it. So thank you very much. Discussing again that is Russia, Turkey and Iran, while knowing that the platform fighting against the humanitarian tragedy has been really a platform for the UN and Stefan de Mistura as a special envoy of the UN. What is the link to the UN activities? Or to be very frank, is this meeting in Astana in Kazakhstan, is this competition to the already existing efforts by the UN, by the global community? I think the worst thing to do is to feel competition. I think all these efforts, not only the efforts by the three countries in Astana, but the efforts by the European Union. And I'm very happy to see that the European Union has decided to convene a meeting of regional countries in April in order to discuss the terms of not only political future of Syria, but also reconstruction of Syria, which is an extremely important element. I think all of this could be complementary, not competitive. Of course, the meeting in Astana is not trying to replace the work of the UN. It's an attempt to build on a modest success. Unfortunately, in the past five, six years, there are no success stories in Syria. This is the only very modest. I'm not trying to aggrandize it. This is a very modest success story. And we need to build on it. We need to try to generalize it to all of Syria with the exception of terrorist organizations. And everybody should help in this process so that we have a solid foundation to build future successes on this achievement. So what I'm hoping is for everybody to understand that this is not a competition, but a complementary work. So thank you very much. I think that is quite important, and everything which helps for peace and understanding, I think that could be appreciated. You mentioned one elephant in the room. I would like to avoid that we have another elephant here in the room, so I will ask you a question so we all know that we are in a very decisive week. And given the inauguration of the elected President Trump on Friday. And so allow me to ask you a quick question. Can you tell us here one upside and one downside of the new incoming administration from your point of view in the U.S.? Well, having watched U.S. politics for close to 40 years now as a student of international relations in the U.S. and an observer from Iran, I believe that we need to wait for the administration to take office before we start passing judgments. Of course, we have very fundamental differences with the United States. We tried to resolve one issue, and that was not just with the United States, but with the United States and five other countries and the European Union. And that has been working at least from our side pretty well, and we have seen even the Obama administration not being very forthcoming from our perspective in implementing its side of the bargain. So I believe that the jury is still, I mean the jury is not even yet convened. So we will have to wait and see what President-elect Trump once inaugurated will try to pursue as his policies. So I'll reserve my judgment as on the positive and the negative side. From the perspective of the Iranian people, the policies of the United States have never been positive. So from a chief diplomat of a country, so we certainly accepted a very diplomatic answer. But what we have seen already or listened to was, I think, a very impressive, remarkably speech by the Chinese president yesterday here on this stage, maybe even historic. And without talking about the detailed content, my question is, well knowing that you have recently signed an agreement on the military security issues together with China, with other countries as well, India, your engagement in Syria with Turkey and Russia, do you see a shift in the question of global alliance and global geopolitical approaches by your country outweaching in the region as well as globally? I think the nature of the global environment has changed. The transitional phase in international politics has brought new realities to the forefront. The most important one is that states no longer monopolize the global scene. Not only private corporations who are represented here have a great impact on the world scene, but even non-state actors look at the impact of Al Qaeda, ISIS and Nusra, other non-state actors, even in the security field. So we're living in an entirely different global environment where patterns of alliance as they existed in the past no longer apply. You cannot have success at the expense of failure of others. And the recognition of this fact is very important for everybody. We cannot have security where others are insecure. And that is why we believe that our foreign policy has to be multi-dimensional and not a single-dimensional. China and Russia and India remain our important partners. They have been with us during our difficult times. But we are interested in expanding our relations with the EU. We're interested in expanding our traditionally good relations with the rest of Asia, with Japan, with Korea. And we're open to economic relations even with the United States. So while we have our political differences with the United States, we're not close to economic relations as the deal that we signed with Boeing indicates. Two very major deals that Iran signed recently, one with Airbus and one with Boeing, indicates that in our approach to global community, we have an open mind. And that is how we want to move forward. Again, with China, we have a multi-faceted relationship. China is our biggest trading partner. We have had good security understanding. We understand that extremism and terrorism are a major threat to all of us. And they cannot be contained by any one individual country alone. All of us need to work together. And I think what has brought Iran, Turkey and Russia together in finding an end to the catastrophe in Syria is the recognition of the fact that terrorists, extremists, violence and security recognize no borders. And we need to work together. And that is the cornerstone of our policy. So the issue in global cooperation, that is the spirit exactly of the World Forum of our platform, particularly in the geopolitical area to come together. And it's almost my last question, Excellency. Last year we have been here at the same place and there was some recent discussion with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And my question is bringing this all together what we just discussed. The outreach, the global responsibility, the partnership with other countries in the region and beyond, as well as the Syria topic we just touched on. My question is, will particularly this change maybe your relationship to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Well, I do not see any reason Iran and Saudi Arabia should have hostile policies towards each other. We can, in fact, cooperate for future stability of our region. We can, in fact, work together in order to put an end to the miserable condition of the people in Syria, in Yemen, in Bahrain, elsewhere in the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia were able to actually stop impeding the process of the presidential election in Lebanon. We have a success story. And neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia lost in this process. So we do not need to have zero-sum games. Actually zero-sum games no longer exist. We all either have positive-sum games or negative-sum games. If you try for a zero-sum game, you'll end up having a negative-sum outcome. We now have, look at what happened with the oil prices. Everybody was hurt. And now Iran and Saudi Arabia were able, one way or the other, to accommodate each other and to stabilize the markets. On Lebanon, we were able to at least reach some sort of accommodation and just enable the Lebanese people to do them in their future. I think the same can be applied elsewhere. I do not see any reason Iran and Saudi Arabia cannot work together. Of course, we have a lot of grievances. We lost 460 people in the stampede last year, which was at least caused by negligence. We have seen a lot of rhetoric from Saudi Arabia. We have seen open support. We heard what the interesting comments from my colleague, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, which considered Iran responsible for Daesh, which is the joke of the century. But we have heard this type of statements coming from Saudi Arabia. I think it doesn't help. I think we need to look at the realities of the region. We need to look at the fundamental reasons why our region is moving in this very seriously wrong direction. We need to understand that nobody can derive any benefits, even temporary benefits, from supporting extremism and terrorism and sectarianism. Once we understand that, we cannot contain terrorism in one part of our region. Terrorism and extremism are like contagious diseases that will spread throughout the region and throughout the world before we know it, and it's happening right now. Then Iran and Saudi Arabia can start to think about a different modus operandi for their relations. Thank you very much. I think we are here in Switzerland, which is impartial ground. I think that is a good beginning to take this as an optimistic note that there is an opportunity to come together and to talk even in challenging circumstances about the so-relevant question of peace. Actually, what I mentioned, so it's already my last question, because what you may not know is that Excellency walked an extra mile literally to come here to our meeting because he's heading to a very important other meeting in Malaysia if I can mention this, and maybe you can share what the purpose of the meeting is and before we can say that and conclude this today's session. The unfortunate situation is that in Myanmar, we have the plight of the Rohingya Muslims who need greater international attention. They're in dire shape, and basically nobody's paying enough attention to the fact that this group of people are suffering. Now the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has a special ministerial meeting in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow and I have to rush to the airport in order to get there in time dealing with the case of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and I hope that the rest of the international community also pays greater attention to the tragedy that is unfolding in Myanmar. Excellency, thank you very much. So we can see it's all around the big question of peace and understanding. So you are on your way. Again, thank you very much for being here today to make it happen. Thank you very much for the insights and knowledge. Even it was very fast and quick in a short time and I wish you a great trip and particularly great success. Thank you. Thank you for your attention.