China and Iran: Destined to Clash?

[mota bhai 2,675]

As Iran has been preoccupied with the U.S. and its allies over the past decade, China has quietly established a growing presence along all of Iran’s borders. In none of these places are Iran and China’s interests perfectly aligned. In some cases, particularly the Middle East, they are starkly at odds. Consequentially, should Iran avoid a conflict with the U.S. in the next few years, it’s likely to find China to be its most menacing threat in the future.

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China’s insatiable appetite for energy has led to a rapid expansion in economic ties, with Sino-Iranian bilateral trade rising from US$12 billion in 1997 to US$28 billion in 2009, the same year that China became Iran’s largest trading partner.

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But this ostensibly friendly relationship masks a level of mistrust that runs particularly deep on the Iranian side. Tehran has long perceived China as playing a double game toward it. For example, although Beijing provided Iran with desperately needed arms during its war with Iraq (1980-1988), it provided Baghdad with well over double the amount of arms during the same period.

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Additionally, Iranian markets have been flooded with cheap Chinese goods in recent years, further devastating Iran’s domestic industry. This has increasingly angered ordinary Iranians and forced the government to claim it was taking measures to reduce imports of non-essential goods from Chinese.

On top of this general mistrust, Iran and China’s geopolitical interests are increasingly clashing as Beijing comes to encircle Tehran. On Iran’s eastern borders, China has established itself in both Afghanistan and especially Pakistan.

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China has maintained much more extensive contacts with the Taliban since it was ousted from power in 2001. Given its strong and growing ties with Pakistan and its desire to protect its investments in Afghanistan, it’s not inconceivable that China will ultimately reconcile with the Taliban should it return to power.

By contrast, Iran has steadily expanded its influence in the anti-Taliban parts of western and central Afghanistan, and has served as one of India’s main access points into Afghanistan, much to China and especially Pakistan’s chagrin. Despite the nascent diplomacy, it’s extremely difficult to imagine the Taliban and Iran cooperating after NATO leaves Afghanistan. Should the Taliban return to power, and Beijing reconcile with the group, Afghanistan could thus become a point of dispute between Iran and China.

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Should Iranian-Indian ties continue to prosper, China could see Iran as inhibiting its strategy of using Pakistan to tie down India. As John Garver has noted, China has made it clear that it values its relationship with Pakistan more than its ties to Iran. If forced to choose between them, Beijing will side with Islamabad.

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Beijing’s control over Gwadar Port is the biggest potential flashpoint for Iran and China in Pakistan. Gwadar is the last port in the long line of China’s “string of pearls” to the Middle East. Should China ever convert it into a naval base to project power into the Persian Gulf, Iran would be the only country standing between China in Gwadar and the Middle East. Put differently, Iran would be directly in China’s crosshairs.

Chinese and Iranian interests are more directly at odds in Central Asia.

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China initially made little effort to supplement Russia in Central Asia. Over the past ten years, however, it has quickly made up for lost time by expanding its economic, political and security ties to Central Asian states. Beijing is now deeply involved in the region through a web of bilateral relationships and multilateral organizations ... As Carnegie’s Martha Brill Olcott recently explained: “China has come to displace both the United States and Russia as the great power with the most influence in Central Asia.”

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This will put it at odds with Iran ... China fears Central Asian Islamist groups could aid or radicalize its own Muslim population in neighboring Xinjiang Province. It therefore has sought to leverage its economic clout in the region to weaken the forces of Islam ... On the other hand, under the current regime, Iran sees Islam as the surest way to expand its influence in the region. Thus, it on balance seeks to increase religious fervor among Central Asian people and the ruling elite.

China and Iran’s energy interests in Central Asia are similarly at odds.

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By constructing a series of pipelines and railways – such as the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran corridor – Iran has tried to position itself as Central Asia’s outlet to the Persian Gulf. By gaining access to the Persian Gulf, Central Asian states would be able to deliver liquefied natural gas to Europe and Asia without having to go through Russia ... In return, Iran will collect the transit fees, reduce its isolation, and also gain greater influence and leverage in Central Asia.

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Meanwhile, when completed the China-Central Asia gas pipeline will start in Turkmenistan, cut through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on its way to Xinjiang Province and eventually end in China’s eastern coast. China views its access to these gas and oil resources as critical to its energy security given that overland routes cannot be blockaded by the U.S. Navy. Although Russia is the biggest loser in all this, China’s enormous economic clout ensures that it will easily overshadow Iran in Central Asia. Tehran’s Central Asian ambitions will therefore continue to go unrealized, and Beijing will be the culprit Iran holds to account.

It is on Iran’s western border with Iraq and the Middle East where its clash with China will be most acute, simply because the Persian Gulf is the most important region for both China and Iran. The importance of the region for Beijing is due almost entirely to its rich energy reserves ... China’s oil imports are expected to more than double from 2.9 bpd in 2011 to 6.7 bpd in 2035. At that point the region will provide China with 54 percent of its oil imports.

On the other hand, geography has long ensured that the Persian Gulf consumed the bulk of Iran’s foreign policy energy. This is because nearly all of Iran’s land borders are ringed with mountain ranges that are difficult to transverse, which has historically served to protect Iran from attack as well as inhibit its ability to project power outwardly.

The one exception to Iran’s fortress-like borders is along its southwestern border with Iraq where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet to form the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Although the area is a massive swamp and fairly easy to defend, it is also relatively flat. This topographic feature has tied Iran and Iraq closely together historically and culturally; ancient Persian empires, for example, often located their capital in modern day Iraq. It has also served as Iran’s greatest vulnerability when in a weakened state, such as immediately after the 1979 revolution when Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Iran through the Shatt al-Arab.

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Arguably the greater threat to Iranian influence in Iraq is intra-Shi’a squabbling and Iraqi nationalism. As the Iran-Iraq War demonstrated, nationalism trumps sectarianism for Iraq’s Shi’a population. With the American occupiers gone Iran has to be on guard lest it come to be seen as foreign and malicious in the eyes of Iraqi Shi’a leaders ... China’s rapidly expanding presence in southern Iraq poses a nefarious threat to Iranian influence in the country. By building up Iraq’s oil industry, China is empowering Iraq’s political elites to resist Iranian encroachment.

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Iraq is not the only Persian Gulf country with which China is deepening its involvement. For the past decade Saudi Arabia – Iran’s principle adversary – has been China’s top oil supplier ... Both sides see this as a long-term relationship, as was evident when they agreed to jointly build an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia last year. China also imports oil from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and has thus been engaging closely with the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Indeed, there is even talk of establishing a free trade agreement between the GCC and China.

After years of estrangement over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur population, China and Turkey have also been rapidly expanding ties in recent years ... Total trade volume between Turkey and China reached US$24 billion in 2012 ... Ankara is also expected to purchase an advanced air and missile defense system from China.

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The rapid improvement in Sino-Turkish ties has coincided with a steep deterioration in Turkey’s relationship with Iran over the Arab Spring and Syrian civil war. As the past few years have underscored, Turkey and Iran are the regional states most likely to play a leadership role in the Middle East over the long-term. This will naturally put them at odds with one another. Iranian leaders understand this, and likely are following Turkey’s growing ties with China closely.

Ultimately, the biggest potential threat for Iran is that China’s dependence on Middle Eastern energy will force it to establish a military presence in the region ... Beijing’s string of pearls strategy and plans to build multiple carrier strike groups are clearly geared towards giving future Chinese leaders the option, and if the decisions of past great powers are any guide, China may very well exercise it. After all, the U.S. was once content with dominating the Caribbean and was a leading opponent of European colonialism. Few would have expected it to become a perceived hegemon in the Persian Gulf.

If China does establish a military presence in the Middle East it will find itself directly at odds with Iran on one of the latter’s core interests – from long before the Shah through the present day, Iran has always harbored regional ambitions. Given its size, relative stability and coherence, in modern times Iran has always seen the presence of external powers in the Middle East as the main obstacle to it achieving these ambitions.

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In short, Iran rightly considers the U.S. as its greatest security threat in the near-term. Given America’s desire to scale back its presence in the Middle East, and the possibility of an U.S.-Iranian rapprochement on the horizon, China’s expansion in the Middle East ultimately poses the greatest threat to Iran over the long term. The U.S. will undoubtedly share Iran’s concern with Beijing’s more assertive Middle East policy, and this could be an additional impetus for them to put aside their bitter rivalry.

Regardless if that occurs or not, it is clear that as China seeks to deepen its presence in the Middle East, it will increasingly have to contend with Iran.

http://thediplomat.com/2013/10/17/china-and-iran-destined-to-clash/?all=true

[Danno 1,228]

Another school of thought is the border between Russia and China.

Russia is 9 time zones yet half the population as the US.

IF their demographics continue to shrink, some speculate China will claim or pressure a sale of some of this territory for its mineral reserves.

It is already well known they are harvesting timber along the boarder.

Demographics is destiny.

Thanx for that article

[mota bhai 2,675]

Thanx for that article

You're welcome.

[Jacque67 7,328]

It will be interesting to see how this develops in the long term.

[Pooky 3,786]

It will be interesting to see how this develops in the long term.

Regime change Chinese style is not pretty.