By AMIR VAH­DAT | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro and Iran’s hard-line pres­i­dent signed a 20-year co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment Sat­ur­day, a day af­ter Maduro praised the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic for send­ing bad­ly need­ed fu­el to his na­tion de­spite U.S. sanc­tions.

In an in­ter­view with Pres­i­dent Maduro af­ter his ar­rival in Tehran for a two-day vis­it, Iran­ian state me­dia re­port­ed late Fri­day that Maduro hailed Iran’s move to send fu­el tankers to his en­er­gy-hun­gry na­tion.

“Tehran’s de­liv­ery of oil to Cara­cas was a great help to the Venezue­lan peo­ple,” he said.

Maduro’s first vis­it to Iran comes amid ten­sions across the Mid­dle East over the col­lapse of Iran’s nu­clear deal with world pow­ers. U.S. sanc­tions and ris­ing glob­al food prices are chok­ing Iran’s ail­ing econ­o­my, putting fur­ther pres­sure on its gov­ern­ment and its peo­ple.

A high-rank­ing po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela — which like Iran is un­der heavy U.S. sanc­tions — is ac­com­pa­ny­ing Maduro on his vis­it, fol­low­ing an in­vi­ta­tion from hard-line Pres­i­dent Ebrahim Raisi.

In a joint press con­fer­ence Sat­ur­day, Raisi and Maduro signed a 20-year agree­ment to ex­pand ties in the oil and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries, the mil­i­tary and the econ­o­my.

Iran­ian Eng­lish-lan­guage PressTV quot­ed Maduro be­fore the news con­fer­ence as say­ing the two men would meet to dis­cuss “the need to well in­form the Iran­ian and Venezue­lan na­tions about the war of sanc­tions and find ways to counter them with stead­fast­ness.”

Maduro said Venezuela and Iran are unit­ed by “a com­mon vi­sion” on in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues and are both vic­tims of co­er­cive mea­sures by the Unit­ed States and its al­lies.

“Cara­cas and Tehran have shaped the strat­e­gy of (a) re­sis­tance econ­o­my and are work­ing to ex­pand it,” he said.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, right, is welcomed by his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi during his official welcoming ceremony at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Maduro is on a Eura­sia tour af­ter Pres­i­dent Joe Biden de­cid­ed not to in­vite him to the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, which be­gan Thurs­day. His stops ear­li­er this week in­clud­ed Al­ge­ria and Turkey.

Turkey is one of a hand­ful of places around the world — Rus­sia and Iran are among them — where Maduro is wel­come amid U.S. sanc­tions on his coun­try.

Venezuela, Cu­ba and Nicaragua were not in­vit­ed to the sum­mit by the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion due to their au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions. That de­ci­sion led to Mex­i­co’s pres­i­dent an­nounc­ing he would not at­tend.

Raisi praised Maduro as a leader “who has shown a pol­i­cy of fight­ing against im­pe­ri­al­ism and has achieved a good po­si­tion by over­com­ing sanc­tions and threats.”

Maduro an­nounced that a di­rect flight be­tween Tehran and Cara­cas would be­gin next month.

Amid ris­ing ten­sions with the West, Iran has start­ed re­mov­ing 27 sur­veil­lance cam­eras from nu­clear sites across the coun­try, the head of the U.N. atom­ic watch­dog said Thurs­day. He warned this could deal a “fa­tal blow” to the tat­tered nu­clear deal as Tehran en­rich­es ura­ni­um clos­er than ever to weapons-grade lev­els.

That de­vel­op­ment came a day af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency’s board of gov­er­nors cen­sured Tehran for fail­ing to pro­vide “cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion” over man­u­fac­tured nu­clear ma­te­r­i­al found at three un­de­clared sites in the coun­try.

Iran’s cur­ren­cy dropped to its low­est val­ue ever af­ter the cen­sure — to 326,300 ri­als to the dol­lar.