China’s stance during West Asia conflict showcases Iran as its second-tier partner: Report

London: China considers Iran as a second-tier partner while Pakistan continues to occupy a first-tier position. That asymmetry showcased during the recent conflict in West Asia as China did not send a single warship, missile battery or a soldier after the Israeli and American strikes killed Iran’s then-Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior military officials, a report has claimed.

“China’s Iran strategy is not an alliance. It is a hedge, calibrated to the barrel and the missile. Beijing will buy Iran’s oil at a discount, share intelligence and satellite access, dangle fighter jets, and lean on Moscow to keep Tehran diplomatically afloat — but it will not fire a shot on Tehran’s behalf, and it will not let its friendship with Iran cost it its far deeper relationship with Washington,” Jasim Al-Azzawi mentioned in an opinion piece in UK-based Middle East Monitor. When China and Iran signed the 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Chinese state media termed it as a civilisational bond.

The agreement covers several areas like infrastructure, banking, energy and “military-technical” cooperation. However, it does not include a mutual defence clause and stops short of the ironclad commitments China has made to Pakistan, or that Russia has promised North Korea. During the recent tensions in West Asia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned the killing and termed the conflict “a war that should never have happened and benefits no party”. His statement is a studiously neutral formulation that scholars at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said was “not an outright condemnation of the United States or Israel, or indeed of Iran”, but instead a “more generalised statement of regret”.

“Beijing’s caution was not cost-free neutrality; it was profitable neutrality. China spent the better part of the past two years quietly assembling one of the largest strategic petroleum reserves in its history, an estimated 1.2 billion barrels, equal to some 109 days of import cover, built substantially on sanctioned Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan crude bought at discounts of $5 to $15 a barrel below Brent. None of this means China is indifferent to Iran’s fate. On the contrary, Iran sits at the geographic and ideological hinge of two projects Beijing cannot abandon,” Jasim Al-Azzawi mentioned in an opinion piece in Middle East Monitor.

“If Iran were to fall into a Western orbit, that corridor terminates abruptly at the Pakistani-Iranian frontier. The oil-rich Gulf states, the ultimate prize of the Middle Eastern leg of the initiative, would become unreachable by land. For a project Xi Jinping has staked his legacy on, that is not an acceptable outcome,” the author added. (IANS)

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