{"id":29721,"date":"2020-07-15T12:08:46","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T06:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=29721"},"modified":"2020-07-15T12:08:46","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T06:38:46","slug":"the-china-iran-strategic-partnership-and-how-it-can-change-geopolitics-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=29721","title":{"rendered":"The China-Iran strategic partnership, and how it can change geopolitics in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

New York Times reports amid US sanctions on Iran, the partnership would entail trade, investment, military cooperation and possibly Chinese military bases.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n

New Delhi<\/strong>: China and Iran are reported to have quietly drafted a comprehensive military and trade partnership. The deal would make way for about $400 billion worth of Chinese investments into Iran\u2019s key sectors, such as energy and infrastructure, over the next 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

According to US officials, the agreement could also make way for Chinese military bases in Iran, fundamentally changing the region\u2019s geopolitics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ThePrint looks at the proposed deal, what led to it and its implications for the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

China’s more pronounced interest in Iran should alert the US to review its past approach towards Tehran<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The deal<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An 18-page draft of the proposed agreement was accessed and\u00a0reported\u00a0by the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0(NYT<\/em>), and it talks about expanding Chinese presence in Iran\u2019s \u201cbanking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects\u201d. In return, Iran is to provide regular and \u201cheavily discounted\u201d supply of oil to China for 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the strategic realm, the proposed draft talks about deepening military cooperation, with \u201cjoint training and exercises\u201d, \u201cjoint research and weapons development\u201d, and intelligence sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

This deepening military cooperation would be intended to fight the \u201cthe lopsided battle with terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The deal is reported to have been first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his 2016 visit to Tehran, and the proposed draft was approved by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif over the last couple of weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

These moves\u00a0come at a time when the Iranian economy has been crippled by sweeping US sanctions, which have ensured that any company in the world that deals with Iran would be cut off from the global financial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The deal has not been presented to the Iranian parliament yet, and Beijing is still to disclose the terms of the deal, though Iranian officials have publicly acknowledged that there is a \u201cpending agreement with China\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

What does it entail?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The opening sentence of the proposed draft says: \u201cTwo ancient Asian cultures, two partners in the sectors of trade, economy, politics, culture and security with a similar outlook and many mutual bilateral and multilateral interests will consider one another strategic partners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

There are nearly 100 projects cited in the document that would have Chinese investments, and are expected to be a part of Xi\u2019s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to extend China\u2019s strategic influence across Eurasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

These 100 projects include \u201cairports, high-speed railways and subways\u201d, effectively touching the lives of most Iranian citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChina would (also) develop free-trade zones in Maku, in northwestern Iran; in Abadan, where the Shatt al-Arab river flows into the Persian Gulf, and on the gulf island Qeshm,\u201d notes the\u00a0NYT<\/em>\u00a0report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The draft agreement also talks about China building infrastructure for 5G telecommunications network in Iran. This would see Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei \u2014 a company that has come under severe US sanctions and been banned by many countries across the world such as the United Kingdom and Australia \u2014 enter the Iranian market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Chinese global positioning system BeiDou is also proposed to assist Iran\u2019s cyber authorities in regulating what is shared in the country\u2019s cyberspace, potentially paving the way for Iran to develop a China-like \u201cgreat firewall\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

US \u2018pushed\u2019 Iran into China\u2019s arms<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Since coming to power in 2017, US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which froze the country\u2019s nuclear programme, and enforced comprehensive sanctions on Iran, devastating its economy. Now \u201cTehran\u2019s desperation has pushed it into the arms of China\u201d, remarks the\u00a0NYT<\/em>\u00a0report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIran and China both view this deal as a strategic partnership in not just expanding their own interests but confronting the US. It is the first of its kind for Iran, keen on having a world power as an ally,\u201d said Ali Gholizadeh, who works at University of Science and Technology of China in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, Iran used to seek European cooperation for trade and investment, but it has reportedly grown increasingly frustrated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe draft agreement with Iran shows that unlike most countries, China feels it is in a position to defy the United States, powerful enough to withstand American penalties, as it has in the trade war waged by President Trump,\u201d said the NYT<\/em> report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US State Department spokesperson said the US would continue to \u201cimpose costs on Chinese companies that aid Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Middle East geopolitics<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For decades now, the US forces have dominated the Middle East\u2019s security paradigm, but this agreement could now provide China with a foothold in the region, according to unnamed US officials in the\u00a0NYT<\/em>\u00a0report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Analysts contend that when China develops strategic ports in various countries, there is a possibility that it might militarise them at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the proposed draft, China plans to build several ports in Iran, one of them at Jask, just outside the Gulf of Hormuz, which is the entrance to the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0Gulf of Hormuz is among the nine key maritime chokepoints across the world. All of these chokepoints are controlled by the US, which many security analysts believe is a marker of US strategic hegemony over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Now, a Chinese port at Jask \u201cwould give the Chinese a strategic vantage point on the waters through which much of the world\u2019s oil transits.\u00a0The passage is of critical strategic importance to the United States, whose Navy\u2019s Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain in the gulf,\u201d the NYT report states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

With inputs from ThePrint<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times reports amid US sanctions on Iran, the partnership would entail trade, investment, military cooperation and possibly Chinese military bases. New Delhi: China and Iran are reported to have quietly drafted a comprehensive military and trade partnership. The deal would make way for about $400 billion worth of Chinese investments into Iran\u2019s key […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}