NEW DELHI, July 4. /TASS/. Iran’s government and people are grateful to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for granting membership to Tehran, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said during an online SCO summit chaired by India on Tuesday.

"We appreciate the Indian prime minister’s kind words and his efforts to organize the summit. On behalf of the government and people of Iran, I would like to take this opportunity to express gratitude for making our country a full-fledged SCO member," he noted.

On Tuesday, the SCO officially announced that Iran had joined the organization, becoming its ninth member.

The New Delhi summit brought together the leaders of all SCO member states. Iran, Belarus and Mongolia were invited to participate as observer countries, and Turkmenistan attended the event as a guest. Senior officials from six international and regional organizations, including the UN, ASEAN, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, were also invited.

The SCO was founded in the Chinese city of Shanghai on June 15, 2001, by six states: Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, and Uzbekistan. Pakistan and India joined the club in 2017.