søndag 4. april 2021

The China-Iran pact is a game-changer

When China and Iran, two of the United States’ main adversaries in the contemporary world situation, enter into a 25-year strategic pact, it is pointless to split hairs and speculate whether the development affects American strategies. Of course, it does. The West Asian region is all about geopolitics – starting from oil and jihad to petrodollar.

The region served as the crossroads of empires for centuries between Europe and Asia. And in modern history, foreign intruders conflated new poignant realities – failed states, humiliated peoples, crippled economies, extreme inequality and poverty, devastated environments, plundered resources, conflicted geographies and violent radicalism.

The historic China-Iran agreement signed on March 27 in Tehran during the visit of China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been under negotiation since the 2016 visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran.