How America Is Pushing China and Iran Together
The $400 billion Iran-China deal is not the culmination of a process or the start of a new era. It is, however, a critical inflection point in a relationship that will play an outsized role in a new era of great power competition.
Traveling to the Middle East, the Chinese Foreign Minister stopped in Tehran to sign what is promoted as a $400 billion twenty-five-year agreement that would boost Iran’s economy, expand China’s footprint in the Middle East and deepen the strategic ties between the two countries. The agreement itself is almost breathtaking in its scope, covering agreements to cooperate on everything from infrastructure and banking to green energy and technology. But ultimately, it is a roadmap with no specific figures or tangible commitments. Even the $400 billion price tag associated with this roadmap seems to be from a poorly sourced report about the agreement from long ago. The operationalization of this agreement will take new rounds of talks and much more time. The President of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce Majidreza Hariri said that the process will take two years.