Iran, China and Russia: in Strategic Partnership

Volume 6, Issue 1, February 2022     |     PP. 23-44      |     PDF (267 K)    |     Pub. Date: January 20, 2022
DOI: 10.54647/sociology84734    79 Downloads     7459 Views  

Author(s)

Adam Tarock, University of Melbourne (retired), Australia

Abstract
Iran, Russia and China have formed a partnership which has served their geopolitical and economic interests very well over the years . This partnership would most probably not have been formed had it not been for the U.S. relentless hostility directed against the trio in recent decades. This article discusses and analyses briefly the trio's historical ties, but giving greater emphasis to more recent developments. In the Trump era, however, the hostility between Teheran and Washington heightened to the extent that a U.S. military attack against Iran was no longer unthinkable. The intensity of hostility is at present abated but the U.S. change of regime in Iran still remains on the table. In such an eventuality, neither of the two major world powers is likely to come directly to Iran's rescue, but they can make it very difficult for the U.S. to defeat Iran as quickly and as easily as Washington invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. As is discussed here, Iran is too important for Moscow and Beijing to let their junior partner to become a U.S. surrogate.

Keywords
alliance, weakest link, oil, Russia, arm sales, investment, Putin

Cite this paper
Adam Tarock, Iran, China and Russia: in Strategic Partnership , SCIREA Journal of Sociology. Volume 6, Issue 1, February 2022 | PP. 23-44. 10.54647/sociology84734

References

[ 1 ] -Susan Watkins, in New Left Review, “America vs China,” 2019, No. 115, 1.
[ 2 ] - Ghlam Reza Afkhami, Life of the Shah, University of California Press, 2009, 296.
[ 3 ] Afkhami, The Life of, 206.
[ 4 ] Scott Harold and Alireza Nader, “China and Iran: Economic. Political and Military Cooperation,; RAND Corporation, Centre for Middle East Public Policy, 2012, p.
[ 5 ] Alexander Kukin, “Have We Past the Peak of Sino-Russian Rapprochement,” The Washington Quarterly, September 2021, 137.
[ 6 ] Harold and Nader, 2012, 3.
[ 7 ] Esfandyar Batmangholidj, “China Restarts Purchase Iranian Oil: Bucking Trump’s Sanctions.” Bourse and Bazaar,” :twitter.com ,17 June 2019.
[ 8 ] United States Institute of Peace, “Last Among Equals,” (the Iran primer), 6 October 2020.
[ 9 ] Jon B. A. Alterman, “Chines and Russian Influence in the Middle East,” Middle East Policy, Vol. 26, No.2, 2019.
[ 10 ] Iran Daily, “Official: Iran-China Trade to Reach $24 Billion in 2018,” 11 September 2018
[ 11 ] Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai, Moscow and Bejing Have Teheran’s Back,” Foreign Policy, 26 July 2018.
[ 12 ] Juan Cole, “How Trump Lost Iran to China -25 Years: Lion-Dragon Deal Makes Iran Part of One Belt, One Road,” www.informedcomments.org 7 August 2020.
[ 13 ] Susan Fayazmanesh, “ The U.S. Sanctions Are Affecting All Aspects of Iranian Life in Iran,” www.counterpuch.org 1 August 2019.
[ 14 ] Harold and Nader, 2012.
[ 15 ] Pars News Agency, “Senior Analyst Underline’s Irn’s Geostrategic Importance to China,” 20 June 2021.
[ 16 ] Martin Sicker, The Bear and the Lion: Soviet Imperialism and Iran” Freager New York, 1998. Persia’s territories lost to Russia in the war were: present day Republic of Azerbaijan, Daghestan, Amenia, Eastern Gorgia, Igdir, Khanate of Erevan and Nakhchivan.
[ 17 ] Kristen Blake, “The U.S.-Soviet Confrontation of Iran, 1945,1962: A Case in the Annals of the Cold War,” 2009. See also Louise I. Fawcett, “Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946. 1991, Cambridge Middle East Library, 1991, 26.
[ 18 ] Adam Tarock, Iran and Russia in Strategic Alliance,” Third World Quarterly, 1997, Vol. 18, No.2, 216.
[ 19 ] Elizabeth Alexander, “Building on the Reset: The Vice President in Moscow,” The White House Press Release, 10 March 2021.
[ 20 ] Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Empire In Retreat: The Past, and Future of the United States, Yale University Press, 2018, 231.
[ 21 ] Chris Hedges, “Manufacturing War with Russia,” www.commondreams, org 3 June 2019.
[ 22 ] Denis Pinchuck, “Iran and Russia Should Isolate the U.S. in the Middle East,” The Age (Melbourne), 2017, 14.
[ 23 ] Bulmer-Thomas, 2018, 23-28.
[ 24 ] Dilip Hiro, “Under Trump, America’s Global Standing at Record Low,” www.counterpunchh.org 1July 2019.