Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The head of the Iranian military told a member of China’s top brass on Thursday that the United States was the common enemy of the two countries, according to a report in the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said this during a meeting he held with visiting Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Admiral Sun Jianguo.

Firouzabadi told Jianguo that the Islamic Republic had been wary of U.S. plots and conspiracies against China for the past decade, and that he had “sent Brigadier General [Mohammad] Baqeri [the Iranian Deputy Chief of Staff] to inform the Chinese officials of these concerns.”

Firouzabadai claimed that the U.S. was now resorting to proxy wars and “terrorism” to harm Iran’s interests, since its regional military “adventures” in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended in failure.

During the meeting, Firouzabadi and Jianguo signed a draft of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on deepening defense cooperation between China and Iran, particularly in areas of training, technical issues, sharing classified information, cyber warfare, and “counterterrorism operations.”

Firouzabadi noted that the final version of the MoU would be signed in the near future.