The chief officer of Iran’s new National Petrochemicals Company invites Russia to help exploit opportunities in the sector. Iran’s petchem industry has not been targeted by international sanctions so far. Iran looks to become the largest regional producer and exporter of petrochemicals within the next 5 years. Since the earliest days of its Islamic Republic from 1979, Iran has looked to its petrochemicals sector as being a key to its ‘resistance economy’ model – the concept of generating value-added returns by leveraging intellectual capital into significant revenue, profit, and technology-acquisition streams wherever possible. The sector has also always carried with it the advantage of occupying a legal grey area in the various sanctions regimes imposed against it over the past 40 years or so. With […]