In June, Tehran announced that it had concluded an agreement with Beijing for a “25-year joint comprehensive partnership.” Key to the agreement is the Islamic Republic’s prospective role in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a series of transportation, infrastructure, and telecommunications projects that would link the China to trade routes stretching across Asia and beyond. Ofira Seliktar and Farhad Rezaei consider the implications:
Iran would serve as a regional hub for the BRI, giving China extraordinary leeway across a wide range of economic activity. . . . [Another] section of the draft agreement reveals an exceptionally high level of military cooperation between the two countries. This includes, among other things, shared development of defense industries, intelligence sharing, and joint military maneuvers. Earlier reports indicate that China and Iran have been working on a large arms deal timed to coincide with the ending of the UN Security Council arms embargo.
The benefits of this arrangement to China are clear. Beijing . . . has already built a string of logistical station ports along the Indian Ocean to Djibouti and the Suez Canal. Dominating Iran would give China a side presence in the Gulf, notably through the port of Jask, which is just outside the Straits of Hormuz. Most of the world’s oil transits through that passage. Jask is also critical to the U.S., whose Fifth Fleet is headquartered in nearby Bahrain. A powerful Chinese presence there would brush away decades of American strategic domination of the Gulf and swaths of the Indian Ocean.
For the Iranians, who are operating under the severe pressure of American sanctions, the deal is a lifeline. The agreement states that both countries are determined to implement it “in the face of pressure from a third country,” an unmistakable reference to the U.S. Implied in this phraseology is a Chinese threat to work against the harsh sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
Read more on BESA Center: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-china-25-year-plan/