On military cooperation between China and Iran
Military cooperation between China and Iran is defined by the Iran-China Strategic Pact, officially known as the Comprehensive Program of Cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the People's Republic of China. The document was signed on March 27, 2021 by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The details of the agreement are unknown, and a draft version of it appeared in the English-language media on the eve of the signing of the pact, but it is believed that the final version has not undergone significant changes. This was made clear in the Iranian English-language publication Tehran Times, whose function is to inform the English-speaking audience about the official position of the Iranian authorities. It was here that it was said that the material about the draft is almost identical to the signed document.
In the top ten leaders of the global arms trade, China is in eighth place. China's annual arms exports bring in more than $10 billion. In the global arms market, China's share in exports is about 6%, and in imports about 4.5%. Iran as a market for Chinese weapons is of economic interest to China: Iran ranks 4th in defence spending among the Middle East and African states.
Every year, Iran spends about 3% of its GDP on defence, or more than $13 million. Russia, China and Syria are the largest arms suppliers to Iran and its most important security partners. Iran's geographical position makes it an important link in the Chinese Belt and Road project, and the lifting of the arms embargo on Iran (UN Security Council Resolution 2231 of July 20, 2015) opens up opportunities for China to strengthen its influence on Iran through expanding military cooperation, among other things.
The United States is keen to extend the embargo, fearing military-technical cooperation in the Russia-China-Iran triangle, but it was lifted in exchange for the JCPOA, a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that involves Iran in a program to curtail its development of nuclear weapons and put its work in this area under the control of the US-run IAEA. Now Iran is using the lifting of the embargo to deepen cooperation with China and is successfully sabotaging the JCPOA, trying to buy time and come close to possessing nuclear weapons.
In accordance with UN Security Council resolutions 1747 (2007) and 1929 (2010) of the UN Security Council, Iran was prohibited from acquiring heavy offensive weapons and military equipment, with the exception of air defence systems, since the task of completely banning Iran from exporting and importing weapons was not set. It was only necessary to put this under the control of the UN Security Council – only with its consent could Iran acquire certain types of weapons. Iran was forced to stop nuclear research, but not to completely ban self-defence.
Now the restrictions remain only for rocket technology, but their term expires in 2023. All other contacts in the field of military-technical cooperation are allowed to Iran. China immediately seized this opportunity and secured Iran's prior consent to grant special status to China in order to establish its foothold in the area of traditional US dominance – in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East as a whole.
We are talking about large-scale sales of modern Chinese weapons to Iran for all branches of the armed forces. Cooperation between Iran and China in the air force and navy should be especially close. Already in 2016, after the lifting of the embargo in 2015, China achieved the purchase of 150 Chengdu J-10 fighter jets by Iran. The contract amount was $1 billion.
However, China's plans for military cooperation with Iran have global geopolitical goals rather than commercial ones. Formally, China has offered Iran to invest $400 billion in the Iranian economy over 25 years, including $280 billion in oil and gas processing and $120 billion in the sphere of social and transport infrastructure.
We are talking about the development of ports, hospitals, roads and communication routes, In return, Iran supplies oil to China at favourable prices for China. And to protect investments in Iran, up to 5,000 Chinese military personnel will be deployed. It is desirable to place them in places of oil and gas transit and ports from where China could control the Persian Gulf.
An extremely strong offer has been made to Iran, which, given its position, is quite difficult to refuse. China, in the case of its investments, asks for the possibility of projecting its power against the common enemy with Iran-the United States. Unlike the United States, China is not interested in Iran's domestic political regime. This makes China's offer to Iran extremely tempting.
However, a certain wing of Iranian traditionalist forces believes that in this case, China buys Iran completely and irrevocably, and forever. Ideologically, China is alien to Islam and is considered a pagan country in Iran. A movement of resistance to the Iran-China pact has emerged in Iran. They talked about the sale of the Motherland and similar threats, which forced the Iranian authorities to slow down the pace of rapprochement with China, and declare the signed pact a memorandum, an agreement of intent, and a road map.
Problem statement.
The problem zone for Iran remains its navy, which was in poor condition as a result of sanctions. Three frigates and two corvettes in the Iranian naval group are patrol vessels, outdated (1971, 1972 and 1964 built) and unable to project power beyond the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
Two frigates have been under construction since 2006-2007 and are already obsolete, one frigate has been in service since 2010, and in general, Iran's ship group includes three inactive old destroyers, three corvettes and four frigates, a flotilla of jet missile boats for the coast guard, ten of which were made by China in 1994-1996, ten were made by Germany in 1977-1981, four Iranian boats of the early noughties and three old American ones.
The submarine fleet consists of thirty small-tonnage diesel submarines, three of which are Russian-made, four are borrowed from North Korea, and the rest are made in Iran. The modernisation of the Iranian navy is its most important task.
The United States intends to use the fact that some of the Iranian elites are wavering to weaken the wing of its power that is in favour of cooperation with China. First and foremost, article 146 of the Iranian Constitution prohibits the deployment of any foreign military bases on Iranian territory, even for peaceful purposes.
The signed document does not say anything about Chinese military bases, and their legal status, if necessary, is not specified anywhere. It is likely that in practice, the deployment of Chinese military bases in Iran is difficult due to the lack of consensus on this issue until China reaches the threshold of investment in the Iranian economy beyond which it can exert the necessary influence on Iran's political decisions.
However, the precedent of China's investment in Ukraine shows that there is no direct relationship between the volume of investment in the country and the degree of influence on its leadership. External governance is acquired through a combination of hybrid means of influence, the most important of which are the attractiveness of culture and political model and military guarantees to the ruling regime.
The sympathies of the population and elites are needed to influence loyal politicians and public sentiment. The Chinese model and culture are so specific that they are not suggested by the Chinese leadership to copy. Chinese specifics are not applicable for replication even in Asia.
Iran's cultural, religious and political barriers are insurmountable for China, and there is no task to overcome them. The Iranian political myth also appeals to the antiquity of its civilisation, just like the Chinese one, and therefore the ambitions of the Iranian establishment will always remain a problem for China. Under certain conditions, China's economic and military deployment in Iran may not take place as planned in the pact.
Most likely, if the Xi Jinping group leaves power in China, handing it over to the opposition, where pro-American sentiments are strong, the Iran-China pact in its current form will not take place. However, in 2016, the Chinese leadership began difficult negotiations with Iran, which hoped to diversify investment sources under the cover of the JCPOA deal and the agreement reached with the 5+1 group.
Since the competition at that time was quite large, and there was a struggle for the right to participate in the development of Iranian oil and gas projects, Chinese proposals were not without alternatives for Iran. Everything changed with the arrival of Trump, when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, and Iran again fell into the sanctions blockade in 2018.
Here, China's proposals have become uniquely relevant for Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has agreed to negotiate with China. As a result, in 2019, the parties agreed that China agrees to unprecedented investments in exchange for price discounts (generally up to 32% with a two-year deferred payment) on Iranian oil for China and agreement to follow its foreign policy. The document was signed in March 2021.
It is China's unwillingness to import its own political models to Iran that makes the Chinese proposal acceptable to the Iranian elite in this situation, despite the opposition's resistance.
The struggle for the Iran-China pact creates a specific situation for Russia. Any strengthening of China and Iran objectively creates some restrictions for Russia in the Middle East, the Caspian Sea and Transcaucasia. But without a stable "Russian rear", Chinese expansion is, if not impossible, then very problematic.
This allows Russia to find a broad area of the harmonisation of interests with China and Iran on a range of issues of interest to Russia, primarily on the EAEU's involvement in the Belt and Road project, actions in the Transcaucasus and Syria, relations with Azerbaijan, Turkey and Ukraine, the projection of power in the Mediterranean region, and coordination of actions in relation to NATO.
The United States will seek to prevent the implementation of the Iran-China strategic pact through channels of influence on the opposition in China and Iran. China will try not to let sanctions undermine the Iranian economy, but the crisis is narrowing China's options. US sanctions on Iran have already caused a drop in Sino-Iranian trade turnover and led to sanctions against the Chinese company Huawei. For this reason, China is interested in implementing the JCPOA deal and is ready to put pressure on Iran for this.
Iran is the only point on which a compromise between China and the United States is impossible. By delaying the JCPOA negotiations, Iran is buying time to boost its nuclear program. This creates for Russia and the United States not only freedom of manoeuvre, but also opportunities for some tactical transactions. Russia will not act to the detriment of Iran and China, but it is free to measure the degree of support for their rapprochement.
If the Iran-China pact is successful, a zone free of dollar payments and the influence of US sanctions will emerge, that is, a cluster with resource, technological and financial potential and clearly anti-American character will appear. The long-term agreement between Iran and China on oil eliminates the influence of global financial institutions in the cluster with their exchange tools and its infrastructure in the form of ratings and media.
Conditions are being created for the emergence of adjacent clusters, primarily in Central Asia with the participation of Russia. In fact, this will qualitatively change the situation in the centre of Eurasia, defining the processes in Europe, Africa and Latin America. Especially fierce will be the confrontation of superpowers in the Arctic.
Conclusions.
1. Military cooperation between China and Iran is a means for these countries to achieve their geopolitical goals related to the implementation of historical missions laid down in the national and political psychology of their peoples.
2. Military cooperation between Iran and China is directed against the United States and countries within its sphere of influence, primarily the Anglo-Saxon and Romano-German worlds.
3. The purpose of military cooperation between China and Iran is to protect economic projects that change global transit flows and push the United States out of the key region of Eurasia. In essence, it is a challenge to the status of the United States as a global leader.
4. Iran has tied the US to the JCPOA deal, in which the US is more interested than Iran.
5. Iran seeks to play on the conflict of interests between China and the United States. The actions of Russia, which is "above the fray" in this case, are an important resource for each side of the conflict.
6. Despite Iran's interest in Chinese investment, there is an area of potential conflict between the two countries: Iran's nuclear program and the JCPOA deal, as well as the price of concessions on this topic for Iran and China. China is not interested in Iran's nuclear status, and for Iran, its nuclear status is a non-negotiable issue and a guarantee of preserving its sovereignty in any situation.
7. The implementation of the Iran-China pact will require a lot of preparatory work, which, once done, will mark the beginning of clustering in the Middle East with the participation of China, Iran and Russia.
8. The Iran-China Pact is a key element of the Chinese Belt and Road project, as its land and sea sections are combined. China gains strategic advantages in the global race with the United States, and the PLA becomes a guarantor of the security of transit routes.
9. The Iran-China pact, despite its importance, was signed only by the foreign ministers of Iran and China, which indicates that the heads of state consider it dangerous to publish the text of the document and put their signatures under it. This means that the military component of the pact is not yet involved, and without it, economic decisions are premature.