“The existence of such an office can help increase Iran’s interactions with Europe,” said Hossein Sobhani-Nia who sits on the Presiding Board of Majlis.
He added that EU member states presently have offices in Iran, and noted it falls on the Foreign Ministry to study the possibility of opening a European Union office in Tehran.
The legislator stated that Iran has political and economic relations with most of EU member nations.
A member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on December 27 that EU countries had informally requested the parliament to open an embassy in Iran to aid more "open exchange."
Tarja Cronberg of Finland, who sits on the EP’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said the ambassadors of member states in Tehran backed the idea when she met them in the Iranian capital on an official trip earlier this month.
"We held a meeting with all the [EU] ambassadors and they really stressed the importance of more open exchange … They said the best tool for this would be an EU embassy or maybe the creation of an EU special representative [for Iran] as a first step," she said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on December 28 that Tehran will review any EU request to establish a representative office in the country.
“If the European Union makes a request for establishing a representative office in Tehran, we will review the case according to the importance of relations and its impact,” Afkham said.
The new calls for improved relations comes after Iran and the six major world powers sealed a historic interim agreement in Geneva on November 24 in an effort to set the stage for the full resolution of the West’s decade-old dispute with the Islamic Republic over the country’s nuclear energy program.
In exchange for Tehran agreeing to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities for six months, the six countries have agreed to ease some of the existing sanctions against Iran.
