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Written by Dr. James M. Dorsey.
Eager to enhance its negotiating leverage with the United States and Europe, Iran is projecting imminent membership of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in much the same way it pushed the signing of a much-touted 25-year cooperation agreement with the People’s Republic that has yet to have any real legs.
Converting Iran’s SCO observer status into full membership is likely to be a long shot but would also constitute an important geopolitical victory for the Islamic republic in terms of its positioning vis a vis Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
It could further kickstart putting flesh on the skeleton of the Chinese-Iranian cooperation agreement. Iran and China signed the agreement in March after a year of Iranian assertions that the accord was finally happening after first being plugged in 2016, so far largely remains a piece of paper with no practical consequence.
Founded in 2001, the SCO counts China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan as its members.
Besides Iran, observers include Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.
Against the backdrop of improved relations with Iran, Tajikistan, the only non-Turkic state in Central Asia that four years ago opposed Iranian membership, has this time around taken up the Iranian cause as host of an upcoming SCO summit in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe in September.
“That Iran becomes a major member is among plans of the Shanghai Organization and if other countries are ready to accept Iran, Tajikistan will also be ready,” said Zohidi Nizomiddin, Tajikistan’s ambassador in Iran.
The SCO decides on membership by consensus rather than a majority vote.
Iran and Tajikistan agreed in April to establish a joint military defence and military committee that would further security cooperation between the two countries.
Tajik backing of the Iranian bid is driven in part by the fact that the landlocked country needs access to ports. Iranian ports, including sIndian-backed Chabahar at the top of the Arabian Sea, offer the cheapest and shortest transportation options.
That, in turn, enhances Iran’s potential attractiveness to the Belt and Road, China’s infrastructure, transportation, and energy-driven initiative to connect the Eurasian landmass to Beijing.
The SCO has long been able to sideline the Iranian bid for membership on the grounds that it does not qualify as long as it was sanctioned by the United Nations. The UN sanctions were lifted after the signing of a 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program.
Former US President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018 and Iran has since gradually moved away from compliance with its obligations under the agreement. The United States and the other signatories, including Iran, have been negotiating a US and Iranian return to the agreement since US President Joe Biden came to office in January.
Revival of the accord would involve lifting of US sanctions imposed since 2018 by the Trump administration. China, while frequently skirting US sanctions, has been careful not to run afoul of the United States with regards to Iran.
Sanctions likely were a convenient way of deferring the Iranian membership application. China and the SCO have multiple reasons to refrain from entertaining an Iranian bid.
Having learnt a lesson from allowing India and Pakistan to become members without some resolution of their differences, China and the SCO are unlikely to want an admission of Iran without at the same time inviting Saudi Arabia. Beijing and the group, moreover, would not want to give Iran a de facto veto over membership of its archrival.
The same may be true concerning Iran and Turkey. Turkey has exploited last year’s Azerbaijani victory in its Caucasus war against Armenia to expand relations with the four Turkic Central Asian republics, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
China has so far refrained from comment on reports that appear to be Iranian in origin about Iran being on the verge of SCO membership.
It is a pattern that fits the evolution of the 25-year Iranian Chinese cooperation agreement with one difference. Iran and China were able to sign an agreement without having to act on it. That formula will not work with the SCO. Iran is either a member or it isn’t.
China furthermore appears in contrast to the Iranian push for the cooperation agreement less interested in exploiting Iran’s SCO public diplomacy to send discreet messages to Washington and Riyadh.
Nonetheless, the experience of the cooperation agreement suggests that there is mileage for Iran in hot air messaging even if potential membership is not generating beyond Iranian media the kind of headlines that the 25-year accord did.
As a result, Iran wins irrespective of whether or not it becomes an SCO member in a matter of months.
For one, like with the cooperation agreement, it projects a greater tightening of relations with China than may be the case. It does so at a time that the United States and other Western nations are taking China to task for its aggressive policies and human rights abuses.
Reporting on potential membership of the SCO further counters the Western narrative that Iran is internationally isolated.
Analysts note that the cooperation agreement was signed just before the United States announced that it was about to enter into talks with Iran on a return to the nuclear agreement. Iran appears to be banking on a similar sequence of events before the SCO summit in September.
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud,Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean,Audecibel, Castbox, and Patreon.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute as well as an Honorary Senior Non-Resident Fellow at Eye on ISIS.
I hope Iran joins the SCO ASAP.
About time ! The multipolar world needs to strengthen it’s structures and formalise it’s alliances because the anglozionists are not going to go quietly. TEP.
How does the SCO matter since the gibbering globetrotting genocidal Gujarati gangster government of Modi in India is an active Amerikastani tool in it whose only foreign policy now is to please Amerikastan and attack China? What can Iran get from it that it can’t in bilateral agreements with China and other friends?
The Jew virus is not going to be happy about this.
However, why have the Chinese have only played lip service to their agreements with Iran? Why have neither China or Russia constructed bases, by invitation, in Iran? Unfortunately, my analysis says that both know that the Jews’ coming war against Iran, using our Western children, again, will involve the use of tactical nuclear warheads.
The Chinese and Russians don’t want to have their forces and people anywhere near the use of the Jew controlled West’s use of nuclear weapons against Iran. By not risking a sizable presence in Iran, the Chinese and Russians won’t be forced to form a face-saving response, or consider a response involving nuclear retaliation.
i.e. it’s an ominous sign that the Chinese and Russians are avoiding having too many of theirs on the ground in Iran.
I suffer for what the Jews have in store for Iran and the Iranian people and civilization.
IsraHell will be over-run and it will take the resistance forces only 2 days to do it. This is what was prophesized by a “little Jewish Israeli boy” a few years ago, a startling prophecy which made its rounds throughout the Web.
Maybe this helps to clarify things a bit: You made a few assumptions and considered them as facts, so what follows them will be inevitably wrong. The first assumption is that the Iranian government part is a %100 done deal and only the Chinese part remains which for some unfathomable reasons, they don’t do. The reality is, the Rouhani admin did everything in its power to saboutage Iran’s strategic relations with both China and Russia, from rudely accepting president Xi to unilaterally nullifying some important contracts with China. The same with Russia, the latest of which is the “leaked” audio of FM Zarif and insane accusations and lies he tells about Russia’s role in regard to JCPoA and even Syria. The second one (in relation to a possible Chinese or Russian base in Iran) again, you assumed Iran is willing to give them bases and it is them who refuse to have it (having a base in the Persian Gulf is an old Russian dream, at least from the days of Peter I). Again, in reality Iran will not give its soil to any foreign government to have a base on and there is no need (as per Iranian point of view) to do that. Usually 3 types of governments are eager to have a powerful country’s base on their soil: They are either very unstable and un-sure of their own people and hope to have some backing up by a foreign player (Bahrain, Qatar), the vassal and conquered countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) or are extremely poor and count on the income from the base (Sudan). In case of Syria, it’s a mixture of 1 and 3. Iran is neither. Even when a west puppet ruled Iran (before ’79) he didn’t dare to make it official although many military bases of the Imperial Iran Army and Airforce had an American section closed to even Iranian generals.
Maybe after this administration left the office and the new one took the helm I explain things more. For now it’s enough to know that many of these “why”s point directly to Rouhani, and co, which are a large part of what we know as the Islamic Republic or the government of Iran, the parts which west likes to call as “moderates” and “reformists”.
The only reason that China and Russia are still talking to us is they know this part is going out and the country’s strategic planners think differently compared to this admin. The same reason that the US didn’t take the Vienna talks seriously enough despite all the signals and begging from the current administration. About the possibility if a war, I think it’s safe for now, you’ll have to forgive me for not getting into this subject for now.
Tomorrow is the election day (4 elections in one day: presidential, city councils, mid-terms for the parliament and the Assembly of Experts). The above-mentioned part of the IRI already lost the parliament and Judiciary (2 government branches out of 3). Hopefully the same will be done in presidential and city councils elections, fingers crossed. Let’s hope the door hit them hard on their hairy fat arses!
Very interesting. Can you also explain why Rouhani recently praised Russia if he’s so anti-Russian?
What are you talking about? Iranians would never allow foreign nations to set up military bases inside their own nation.
Do it when the rainbow parade is out! Long overdue.
Remember this for the rest of your life.. China dosent like or either respect or will ever allow Muslims people in their back garden. Is just business for China. Beyond doubt that If a conflict will ever arise China will try to exterminate Muslims religion. Look what they are doing to Muslims in their Country. They are sending Muslims to school to educated them how to behave in society if they refuse they are exterminated. 90% of Muslims know how to behave in society but the rest of 10% of radical Muslim are animals so readucation is the only way. Or death. Look at Pakistan 50% of Muslim in that country behave like are animals in zoo. Their choice.
The analysis here is mixed, incoherent; SCO is and defensive org, not economic, even though these things can correlate. Furthermore, why compare India/Pakistan to Iran/Saudi Arabia? Totaly baseless comparison, as bringing India and Pakistan into the fold SCO (namely Russia and China) got some controll over potensial conflict or even a way to deter it from becoming full blown; while Saudi Arabia will not be invited in SCO unless there is no such thing as petrodollar in existance, nevermind the remifications of defensive part of SCO line. The closet comparison in this regard would be Azerbaijan and Armenia, but as you see they’re just observers, and this will not change unless there is no split lines between them that US can exploit…
There are point of interest, factual things mentioned, but I feel this “analisys” distorts things more then it helps in any way.
Usualy I don’t bother with comments, but this time thought people should know an independant opinion on the quality of material, as its contents touch on very important and sensitive things. Cheers