Yesterday, on March 27th, Iran and China’s foreign ministers signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement-a deal that could be implemented over 25 years and pave the way for development projects worth $400 billion in Iran and provide China with highly discounted Iranian oil.
After Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015, China and Iran started cooperating more closely. Khamenei’s pivot to the East, Xi Jinping’s Iran visit in 2016, and Khamenei’s special envoy to China (Ali Larijani) continued negotiations with his Chinese counterparts over China-Iran future relations resulted in this 25 years partnership agreement.
The deal was first leaked to the public last year when Iranian conservatives pressured Rouhani’s government to be transparent about the deal that was closed with China and explain its terms and conditions to the parliament (Mejlis) of Iran.
Right after that Iranians -mostly those who are in favor of regime change- called this deal a “treaty of selling Iran” and compared it with the treaty of Turkmenchay, when Iran ceded its Caucasus territories to Russia after its defeat in 1826.
Then a five-page document was released, which was allegedly the Iran-China agreement. According to this document, China would invest in Iran’s infrastructure, industry, petrochemicals, telecommunications, mining, agriculture, and renewable energy.
The two countries also agreed to cooperate in the banking sector, ease customs, promulgate trade, and enhance the tourism industry through cultural work. Also, according to this agreement, China gets a 12% discount on Iran’s oil, and this discount could go all the way up to 32% over the years to come.
The most crucial sphere that binds the two countries is their mutual interest vis a vis the West. Iran is in a geopolitical conflict against the U.S. allies in the Middle East, trying to export its revolution and establish a network of well organized non-state actors like Hezbullah in Lebanon; on the other hand, China is hoping to bring Taiwan under its authority and establish hegemony in the South China Sea by expelling the U.S. out of its backyard.
And based on their intentions and interests, the two countries will cooperate politically and militarily. They have agreed to conduct military exercises and share intelligence on terrorism and organized crime. But that’s something that they are already doing, so to imagine that there would be more emphasis on military cooperation among the two countries wouldn’t be wrong.
There are already some speculations in Iran that the two countries will enhance their political and military cooperation, claiming that China would back Iran in UNSC, modernize Iran’s armed forces, sell advanced weapons to Iran, and station its troops and fighter jets on Iran’s soil to protect Chinese assets. How true these claims are cannot be confirmed yet.
However, when China-US relations were not very well established in the 1980s, China used to supply Iran with HY-2 anti-ship cruise missiles and transferred the technology of surface-to-surface missiles to Iran. Now, as a result of that, Iran is in possession of a sophisticated arsenal of anti-air, anti-ship, and surface to surface missiles with a maximum range of 2000 km, so it is not that hard to see that China will retaliate against any U.S. provocations by supplying Iran with yet another advanced weapons’ system.
Some of the critics of this agreement fairly point out that this is only an agreement between China and Iran, and it is like a guide for the future without any commitments or specific timetables on investment, development, and trade; they claim that China is probably not going to deliver on its promises since Iran is not offering them much return on their investment.
They also claim that this agreement is just another Chinese Built and Road Initiative project, and it doesn’t give Iran any more advantage over its competitors-Saudi Arabia and Israel- in the region, since the two countries are already enjoying a much advanced economic, military, and technological cooperation with China; also, China doesn’t want to lose those two economic partners over a deal with poor Iran.
However, Saudi Arabia and Israel are protectorates of the U.S., and in case of any serious escalations over Taiwan or the South China Sea between China and the U.S., these countries will be forced to stop trade with China, and, probably, impose an embargo on China. However, that doesn’t apply to Iran. Iran can supply China with its cheap oil through land from Eurasian countries and get technological support from China instead of that oil. The point is that Iran is much more reliable to China than Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries.
To conclude, the Iran-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement is much more important than China’s ties with other Persian Gulf states o. China’s only hope to get energy after a military escalation with the U.S. is Iran, and the only way to escape the U.S. sanctions and pressure for Iran is China. This agreement is a historic deal between the two nations that would serve their mutual interests in the upcoming years.
