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Emerging ties with Iran thwart U.S. efforts to keep Tehran in line

By Robin Wright
The Washington Post

VAHID SALEMI / AP Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, right, converses with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Tehran on Nov. 6.

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TEHRAN, Iran — A major new alliance is emerging between Iran and China that threatens to undermine U.S. ability to pressure Tehran on its nuclear program, support for extremist groups and refusal to back Arab-Israeli peace efforts.

The new relationship has grown out of China's soaring energy needs — crude-oil imports surged nearly 40 percent in the first eight months of this year, according to state media — and Iran's growing appetite for consumer goods for a population that has doubled since the 1979 revolution, Iranian officials and analysts say.

Iran is now China's second-largest source of imported oil.

The economic ties between two nations have broad political implications.

Running interference

Holding a veto at the U.N. Security Council, China has become the key obstacle to putting international pressure on Iran. During a visit to Tehran this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing signaled China doesn't want to see the Bush administration press the council to debate Iran's nuclear program.

The burgeoning relationship is reflected in two huge new oil and gas deals between the two countries that will deepen the relationship for at least the next 25 years, analysts here say.

Last month the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field near the Iraq border.

Earlier this year, China agreed to purchase $20 billion in liquefied natural gas from Iran over the next quarter century.
 
Iran wants trade to grow even further. "Japan is our number one energy importer for historical reasons ... but we would like to give preference to exports to China," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said this month, according to China Business Weekly.

Mutual benefits

In turn, China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including computer systems, household appliances and cars. "They have industry and we have energy resources," said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

China's trade with Iran also is weakening the impact on Iranian policy of various U.S. economic embargoes, analysts here say. "Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China," said Hossein Shariatmadari, a leading conservative theorist and editor.

Accurate trade figures are difficult to get, in part because trade is increasing so rapidly and partly because China's large arms sales to Iran are not included or publicized. But Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said in May that trade had increased by 50 percent in 2003 over the previous year, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Beijing has also provided Iran with advanced military technology, including missile technology, U.S. officials say. In April, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on Chinese manufacturers of equipment that can be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Iran-China ties may be partly a response to the United States, analysts here say. President Bush's strategy has been to contain China and the Islamic republic, said Siamak Namazi, a political and economic analyst, "so that's created natural allies."

The growing presence of U.S. and other Western troops in Central and South Asia and the Middle East is another joint concern. In the English-language Kayhan International, Ali Sabzevari editorialized, "Politically, the two countries share a common interest in checking the inroads being made by NATO in Asia. ... The presence of outsiders does not bode well for peace and security."

The Muslim connection

The countries also share concerns over radical Sunni Muslims. Most Iranians follow the rival Shiite strain of Islam; China has more than 20 million Muslims, and the government has been facing Muslim unrest in some of its western cities.

The dissidents get support from Islamic groups in Afghanistan and the former Soviet Central Asia countries, a region that straddles both Iran and China.

Islam has historically been a link between the two civilizations. It made its way to China via Persia, the ancient state that was based in present-day Iran. Many Chinese Muslims pray in Persian, not Arabic. Their everyday language is Turkic, but their alphabet is Persian.

But in recent times, the two nations' ties have not always prospered.

In the midst of unrest that led to Iran's revolution, one of the last foreign leaders to visit Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi before he was overthrown in 1979 was Chinese Communist Party chief Hua Kuo-feng. "The visit left a very strong negative feeling about China among Iranians," said Abbas Maleki, director of the Caspian Institute, a Tehran think tank.

But today, China with its one-party political system appears to feel fewer restraints than Western nations in dealing with the world's only theocracy.