Hong Kong
CNN
–
A few weeks after his country was hit by a wave of Israeli strikes and the US bombed three valuable nuclear facilities, Iran’s foreign minister met with a brief question this week at a gathering of Chinese regional diplomats.
Their group, Beijing and Moscow-backed Shanghai cooperative organizations, should have a way to coordinate responses to military attacks and play a “central role” in dealing with such threats, Abbas Aragci said, according to Iran’s national media.
Along with Iran, SCO members China and Russia are important members of what Washington lawmakers called the “axis” of dictatorships or anti-American integrity of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.
However, the Iranian proposal does not seem to have direct support from the group, which has 10 members, a regional security group that includes close partners from China and Russia, but also includes rivals from India and Pakistan.
And what was included in Araguchi’s message was a public hint of Iran’s disappointment. Last month, when Israel and the US military hit freely with top military and technical targets, powerful friends from Beijing and Moscow appeared to be sitting on the sidelines.
Still, according to Chinese readouts, Araguchi met at a meeting in China’s Tianjin with Chinese Foreign Minister in Tianjin on Wednesday, saying that he “thanks for his valuable support to Iran.”
Earlier this month, at a summit between another China-Russia-supported group in a massive emerging economy, Iran, member states, were merely a statement of “serious concern over deliberate attacks on private infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities.”
The declaration “denounced” the strike but did not name it Israel or the United States.
However, China’s public response – explicitly condemning the attack but not playing a clear direct role in peacebuilding – has been widely seen as a sign of the limitations of power in the Middle East despite bids to strengthen the regional economic and diplomat influence.
Instead, Beijing has focused on using conflicts to play another message. That means China doesn’t want to be a global leader using power like the United States.
The propaganda machinery of the Chinese ruling Communist Party has long denounced America’s “hegemony” and its “forced use.”
Trade and technology friction with Washington has required more friends than ever before, so they sell that message more important to Beijing. And it sees President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy as creating an opening there.
Over the past decade, Chinese attacks, which have expanded the scope of contested claims in the South China Sea, Taiwan’s military intimidation, and expanded naval expansion, have recently trained more from the home coast, drilling with more strength than ever before.
Beijing is crying out “hypocrisy,” and in 2022 Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his own vision for global security architecture.
That vision united Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who share a distrust of NATO and consider it a provocative actor. That’s a key position and a subtext of why Beijing never condemned Russia’s infringement of Ukraine.
Experts say that China’s apparent lack of role in mediating conflict between Israel and Iran, where Beijing has deep historical and economic ties, indicates the limits of its impact in the region.
However, they also say that Beijing has little interest in walking into regional security as a power player.
“In terms of providing mediation, (China) is happy to provide it, but there is little capacity to project military force in the Middle East and even less political will to be openly and directly involved,” said William Figueroa, an expert on Chinese-Iran relations and an assistant professor at Groningen University in the Netherlands.
Unlike the United States, which maintains substantial military assets to support the region’s allies and interests, China’s ground forces are limited to naval bases in the horns of Djibouti, Africa. Certainly, Beijing’s only military alliance is historic with fellow communist North Korea in its neighbourhood.
Beijing also took part in international efforts last winter to avoid protecting major maritime lanes that are under attack by Yemen’s Hooti rebels following the war between Israel and Gaza.
The attacks put China’s commercial interests at stake, despite Houthis saying it would not target Chinese or Russian ships. And when it comes to efforts to seek a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, China is once again on the sidelines despite its position as an international voice calling for a ceasefire and criticizing Israeli war.
Some experts argue that if China has more global military capabilities, it may throw more of its weight outside its own region.
However, in the Israeli-Iran conflict, Beijing’s focus was on “presenting support for international law as a great alternative to what to portray as a militaristic and illegal intervention in the West,” according to Ton Zhao, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The story has limited traction among the Middle Eastern states, but it works well in the global South, where it helps to hone China’s image and strengthen strategic competition with Washington at a global level,” added Zhao.
Even if Beijing’s response wasn’t surprising to Tehran, going to China and “behave like everything is great” could have been a “bitter pill to swallow” for Araguchi and Iranian defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh in recent weeks, according to Jonathan Fulton, senior fellow at the Middle East Program at the Atlantic Council.
Beijing and Tehran had no mutual defense treaties, and their relationship was primarily economic treaties. According to Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at trade intelligence company Kpler, China took over 90% of Iran’s oil trade imported through intermediaries, bringing Iran’s profits to about $40 billion last year.
Even when it comes to Russia, China’s closest international partner, Beijing is taking a careful step. It will stop the massive supply of military goods due to the Moscow war in Ukraine, instead buying Russian fuel and supply double goods that can strengthen the industrial bases of national defense.
Its support, and more direct military support from Iran and North Korea for the Russian war, has sparked vigilance in the West about new coordination among members to the so-called anti-American “axis.”
However, the latest stress tests for “Axis” appeared to show its weakness. With Israeli and US bombs raining in Iran, Russia and China appeared to be focusing on their own interests and rhetoric. However, Xi and Putin used conflict to emphasize their united front.
However, when it comes to connections with Iran, the actual tests are likely to be:
“This has limitations on what China is trying to do with regard to direct intervention in military conflicts,” said Brian Hart, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank. However, “It is too early to count China’s support for Iran.”
The Russian Chinese model of “walking to the line that it doesn’t provide overt military support” could be a dynamic that develops here, Hart said, as Beijing appears to help the Tehran regime take power. The double-use Chinese-made chemicals needed to produce missile fuel were delivered to Iran earlier this year, CNN reports show.
Still, according to Atlantic Council Fulton, Beijing may be more skeptical of Iran as a strong partner in the region, in that it “cannot project forces to defend airspace” against Israel last month.
And the basics remain the same as how the latest events affect coordination with so-called “axis” countries.
Far from being an alliance or bloc of the West, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, it has “dissatisfaction alignment” with the West, but there are “very different ideas” of how to restructure global rules to address it, Fulton said.
And for Beijing, “What we need in the Middle East is economically motivated. We need a stable region, and Iran really doesn’t support it. Iran creates as many problems as it solves for Beijing.”
