Tehran: The Chinese Foreign Ministry has announced that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will visit China on official business the following week.

According to a statement released by the ministry on Sunday, Raisi will travel to China between February 14 and February 16 at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

According to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, the three-day trip will include talks between Raisi and Xi, a gathering of the two leaders with Iranian and Chinese businessmen, and the signing of cooperation agreements between the delegations of the two countries.

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According to US outlet Politico, which also reported on the upcoming trip, it is "expected to deepen relations between the two political and economic partners that are opposed to the US-led Western domination of international affairs."

The last time Xi and Raisi spoke was at the SCO summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September of last year. The Chinese leader stated that Beijing and Tehran had both decided to strengthen their strategic partnership during the talks.

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Hu Chunhua, the vice president of China, met with Raisi in December while in Iran, and both men expressed a desire to strengthen their bilateral ties.

In spite of US sanctions against Tehran, China is Iran's main oil customer and its largest trading partner. Iranian data indicates that in the previous ten months, the country's exports to China totaled $12.6 billion. During that time, the nation also purchased $12.7 billion worth of Chinese products.

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Iran applied to join BRICS and was officially accepted as a permanent member of the SCO last year, two international organizations in which China and Russia play significant roles.