Iranians can now make online shopping from major retailers Amazon and eBay through a delivery channel established by the Iran Post Company, its managing director says.

“From now on, Iranian citizens can directly buy from Amazon and eBay international retail sites (abroad) and receive their goods in Iran,” Hossein Mehri said Wednesday, quoted by the Fars news agency.

“In our cooperation with eBay and Amazon, an intermediary company has been selected because of sanctions in order to change the dollar into the rial which will also receive post and customs expenses,” he added.

Mehri said Iran Post Company has also started negotiations with post service providers, courier companies and online retailers such as Digikala, Iran’s biggest online store, to deliver packages.

He hoped the arrangements would also make package deliveries from Iran to foreign countries possible, Fars reported.

In July, Mehri said his company had signed an MoU for cooperation with Germany’s logistics firm DHL and Dutch package delivery firm TNT Express.

Under the agreement, Iran Post Company would collect local parcels on behalf of the foreign companies and deliver them to those firms in order to reduce the forwarding time, he said then.

DHL is owned by German mail and logistics group Deutsche Post. It has been operating in Iran for years through a representative but its cooperation with the state-run Iranian post company is the first in its kind.

Last month, a news agency said a Microsoft Store had opened in Tehran for sales of mobile phones produced by the multinational US technology giant but the claim was dismissed in other reports.

US media are criticizing “strict, decades-old restrictions” that will continue to prohibit trade with Iran even after sanctions against the country are lifted.

The Wall Street Daily has warned in an article that US corporations are set to lose big to their European and Asian rivals once the gates to the Iranian market open in a post-sanction period.