Triple-Axis

Iran's Relations with Russia and China

Ariane Tabatabai, Dina Esfandiary

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781838609771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The most significant challenge to the post-Cold War international order is the growing power of ambitious states opposed to the West. Iran, Russia and China each view the global structure through the prism of historical experience. Rejecting the universality of Western liberal values, these states and their governments each consider the relative decline of Western economic hegemony as an opportunity. Yet cooperation between them remains fragmentary. The end of Western sanctions and the Iranian nuclear deal; the Syrian conflict; new institutions in Central and East Asia: in all these areas and beyond, the potential for unity or divergence is striking. In this new and comprehensive study, Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary address the substance of this `triple axis' in the realms of energy, trade, and military security. In particular they scrutinise Iran-Russia and the often overlooked field of Iran-China relations. Their argument - that interactions between the three will shape the world stage for decades to come - will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the contemporary international security puzzle.

CHAPTER 1

IRAN AND THE WORLD
ORDER:RUSSIA AND CHINA
AS A BULWARK AGAINST
THE WEST

Before examining Iran's political, economic and military relations with Russia and China and how they help the country haul itself out of international isolation, it is important to understand Iran's recent history and why the Islamic Republic thinks and functions the way it does. Iran's worldview as well as what drives its foreign policy decisions, and how Russia and China share some of these drivers will provide the context for the examination of Iran's relations with Russia and China.

Iran's Place in the World

The Cold War provided the backdrop for the Shah's worldview and political and security thinking. He saw Communism as the greatest threat faced by Iran. Internationally, he was concerned about the domino effect – whereby states, including his own, could fall one after the other to Communist ideology and rule. Domestically, groups, typically inspired by Maoist or Marxist–Leninist models, sought to undermine or overthrow the monarchy. As a result, the Shah's security apparatus often propped up Shia Islam as a counterweight to Communism. It was only later, when the Islamists emerged as a dominant force, that the Shah's threat perception and attention shifted from Communism to Shia revolutionary ideology. But by then, it was too late. In addition to blending Shia values and Communist ideals, the revolution also incorporated anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism – a response to the Shah's policies and the US and British-backed 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. The revolutionaries believed Washington had interfered in their domestic politics, propped up an unjust dictator, and trained and equipped his intelligence services and security apparatus to torture and kill his political opponents. So prominent were the beliefs of America's hands in Iranian affairs that when an earthquake shook the city of Tabas in 1978, a rumour began to spread that it was caused by US underground nuclear weapon tests in Iran.¹ And while many of these rumours had no basis in reality, they spread quickly and shaped people's views of the United States.

The revolution shifted Tehran's strategic outlook, political narrative, and alliances. It replaced the pro-West Shah with the Islamic Republic, whose political narrative was based on several core beliefs. Immediately upon seizing power, Iran's revolutionary leaders advocated for a Muslim awakening and unity among the ‘oppressed peoples of the world’ to stand up to ‘Western imperialism’.² The revolutionaries saw the post-World War II order as one created to promote the interests of the West at the expense of those of the rest of the world. The calls were led by the man who emerged as the revolution's key figure and the founder of the Islamic Republic: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As a result, Tehran distanced itself from the West, which the Shah had embraced throughout his reign, though not without some tension. As such, Iran developed an anti-imperialist narrative, one denouncing international law and institutions as the West's vehicle for imposing its will on the rest of the world, a narrative further strengthened during the Iran–Iraq War. Indeed, as Iranians saw it, the international order was supporting Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a country that had invaded Iran, and later used chemical weapons against Iranians and its own Kurdish population.³ Iranian leaders began to denounce the international system and the UN Security Council, in particular, as it stood by and watched these atrocities being committed.⁴

Later, the successive rounds of sanctions the international community imposed on Iran in order to isolate it for its controversial nuclear programme reinforced this view. As a result, along with rejecting Western imperialism, self-reliance became an increasingly important part of the Iranian revolutionary narrative, prompted by its Supreme Leader, Revolutionary Guards, and other power centres. Hence, as we will see later, in response to the isolation resulting from the sanctions, Tehran coined the term, ‘resistance economy’.⁵ Thanks to this roadmap, Iran aimed to reduce its reliance on oil, boost other areas of its economy and production, become an exporter, rather than an importer, and ultimately build a ‘sanctions resistant’ economy.⁶ In parallel, the Islamic Republic tried to balance this narrative with efforts to present Iran as an upstanding member of the international community. Indeed, despite all its criticism of international institutions, the new regime did not make a decision to quit, forego, or renegotiate its memberships in various fora.⁷ Instead, it opted to preserve much of the country's pre-revolution international standing. Nevertheless, despite remaining a part of the international order, the Islamic Republic shaped much of its own political and security narratives around its distrust of the United States and enmity towards Israel. And while Iran remains a member of a number of international institutions, it has failed to comply by its international obligations on multiple occasions, especially those pertaining to nuclear non-proliferation and human rights.

Yet, despite these broad trends, it would be a mistake to characterise the Islamic Republic as a deeply ideological and monolithic entity – as the Western, particularly American, conventional wisdom holds. While the Supreme Leader is the final decision arbiter, he is not the only decision-maker in Tehran. Rather, the regime is composed of multiple power centers and the political elite takes part in lengthy debates on domestic and foreign policy issues. In addition, the regime's general stance towards the international order has not changed much since the revolution and its security narrative remains dominated by the distrust of international law and institutions, anti-imperialism, and anti-Americanism. But each successive government adopted a different approach to foreign policy. Since the early 2000s alone, Iranian foreign priorities have changed drastically in practice, and the accompanying rhetoric has been multi-layered. The following sections assess each recent government's view of the world and its foreign policy attitude.

The government of reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005) privileged relations with the West, putting forward the idea of the ‘dialogue among civilisations’. Under Khatami, Tehran reportedly proposed a ‘grand bargain’ to Washington, which offered to address some of the United States and its allies' most pressing concerns.⁸ But the George W. Bush administration rejected this overture and, as we saw, labelled Iran as a part of the ‘Axis of Evil’.⁹ The grand bargain failed and the incident only compounded the feeling in Tehran that it could not trust the West because America and its allies were hell bent on toppling the Islamic Republic rather than building relations with it. It also added to the long history of missed opportunities for dialogue between Iran and the United States. Khatami also sought to solve the nuclear crisis, which had emerged during his tenure. Initially, Iran and the so-called EU3 – later named the P5+1 or EU 3+3 when the European Union, China, Russia, and the United States joined Germany, France, and the United Kingdom – made some progress. But the process collapsed in 2005, leaving the issue unsolved. Shortly after, hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ahmadinejad's tenure was, in fact, an exception rather than the rule in recent years, in its willingness to antagonise its neighbours and the West, while shifting towards Russia and China, focusing on developing ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and establishing an Iranian presence in Latin America and Africa. The Ahmadinejad period saw political and economic upheaval and isolation for the country and the failure to reach a solution over Iran's nuclear file. Interestingly, Tehran is believed to have ceased its consolidated weaponisation efforts in 2003, during the Khatami era, while only pursuing some weapons' related activities under Ahmadinejad, which it ceased altogether in 2009.¹⁰ But it was under Ahmadinejad specifically, that Tehran started to pay the political and economic price for its failure to comply by its international obligations with successive rounds of international sanctions. The negotiations resumed during the last year of Ahmadinejad's tenure in 2012. While this was the first time that Iranian officials met with their US counterparts in secret meetings in Oman, the Iranian side did not seem as forthcoming.¹¹ But the tone of the talks changed under Ahmadinejad's moderate successor, President Hassan Rouhani.

Rouhani's vision of international affairs, as demonstrated in the negotiations, was in line with his campaign slogan of ‘hope and pragmatism’. His worldview entailed ‘constructive engagement’ with friends and foes alike.¹² Rouhani's first term was largely dominated by the nuclear negotiations, which Iranian officials viewed as a prerequisite to other items on their agenda.¹³ In that context, Tehran began to wholeheartedly re-engage with the West, with a particular focus on what it viewed as the P5+1's leader, the United States.¹⁴ The talks marked a departure from the previous three decades of lack of diplomatic discussion. The two countries had not directly engaged with one another at the highest levels of their diplomatic corps since the end of the hostage crisis in the early days of the Islamic Republic. This is partly due to Iran's resentment of US presence in its neighbourhood and what it views as American involvement in Iranian affairs before the revolution, symbolised by what many Iranians believe to be a negative role played by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the overthrow of Mosadeq.¹⁵ The United States, for its part, deeply distrusted Tehran due to the US embassy hostage crisis and the regime's anti-American rhetoric and propaganda, including the famous ‘death to America’ chants of Iranian Friday prayers. But the taboo of Iranian and US diplomats sitting at the same table was finally broken with the first direct conversation between sitting US and Iranian presidents, when Obama spoke with Rouhani. Following this, Iranian and US nuclear negotiators led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry began the marathon talks that resulted in the JCPOA. The two countries and the other parties deliberately limited the scope of the talks to the Iranian nuclear programme – though they did touch upon other outstanding points of contention occasionally, particularly regional security, the arrest and detention of dual nationals, and broader human rights, during the informal side-line discussions.¹⁶ For example, the two sides discussed ISIS' takeover of large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in summer 2014 on the side-lines of the talks in Vienna.

After Rouhani's election, the United States and Iran created a direct channel between their top diplomats, which subsequently helped resolve a number of diplomatic, political, and military incidents. For example, this channel was significant in the quick release of ten US sailors captured in Iranian territorial waters close to the IRGC base on Farsi Island, in the Persian Gulf. Yet, this semi-détente between the two adversaries did not lead to a great shift towards the West, and away from China and Russia on Iran's part. Upon the election of Donald Trump, the progress made by the two countries during the overlap of Obama and Rouhani was stymied. But the Rouhani government continued to try to pave the way to better relations with the region and the West, especially Europe.

Indeed, despite often taking a backseat during the nuclear talks, the Europeans stood to gain from the JCPOA and were actively pursuing partnerships with Iran. During the talks and in the immediate aftermath of the deal, European officials and business delegations flocked to Iran to explore new opportunities and sign hundreds of MOUs.¹⁷ For their part, Iranian officials and businesses visited European capitals to sell the young and burgeoning market in Iran.¹⁸ But as time went on, it became apparent that initial interest would not translate into a rush back into Iran, and many of the MOUs signed with Iranian counterparts were slow to materialise, if at all. As a result, Iranians did not see a drastic improvement in their living and economic conditions. Rather, sanctions relief was slow and problematic, and did not trickle down to those who needed it the most. Rouhani's government, which had not conducted proper expectation management, and in fact, oversold the possibility for economic recovery, found itself faced with a great deal of criticism over its focus on reaching a nuclear agreement, at the expense of Iran's domestic scene, epitomised by the protests that rocked 80 cities throughout Iran at the end of 2017. It is important to note, however, that the projected rush back into the Iranian market did not materialise, which was partly Iran's own doing. Indeed, Iran's economy is notoriously opaque, devoid of international regulations, permeated by the Revolutionary Guards at every level, and full of barriers to entry for foreign businesses. Eight years of economic mismanagement under Ahmadinejad only served to worsen the situation. While the Rouhani government succeeded in somewhat reducing inflation and boosting growth, it struggled to reduce unemployment and address some of the underlying issues plaguing the Iranian economy, including rampant corruption, inefficiency, and an overstretched banking sector. All of this, along with the continued uncertainty propagated by President Trump, contributed to the hesitation on the part of foreign businesses looking to invest in or establish a presence in Iran.

As a result, conservatives in Iran once again used the opportunity to criticise the deal, and broader engagement with the United States. Washington and its allies cannot be trusted, they argued, because they seek to impede the Iranian people's progress.¹⁹ According to conservatives, the nuclear issue was the right excuse at the right time for the West to pressure and isolate Iran, and now that it was resolved, the United States and its allies would search for other excuses to continue this trend. As Khamenei put it: America's problem is more fundamental than specific areas of concern US officials and lawmakers point to – including the nuclear issue, human rights, and terrorism. America's problem is the nature of the regime itself and the Islamic Republic as a whole.²⁰ As a result, far from changing Iran's mindset, the JCPOA's implementation reinforced the idea that Tehran could only rely on itself and expand its ties to non-Western players. In that sense, even though Iran came to the negotiating table wanting to diversify its suppliers, open up competition in its market, and reopen the country to investors, with a particular emphasis on resuming business with the Europeans, it ended up further forging its ties with China and Russia.²¹

Iran's Relations with Russia–China and Revising Ancient Partnerships

Iran has a long history of diplomatic, trade, and military relations with Russia and China.

Chinese officials often refer to their country's relations with Iran as ‘20 centuries of cooperation’.²² Starting with the very foundation of Persia during the Achaemenid dynasty (500–330 BC), the groundwork was laid out for what would become the Silk Road connecting China to Europe through the Middle East. The Silk Road was established around 130 BC, under the Han dynasty. During that period, China and Persia began diplomatic and trade relations, already posting ambassadors to one another's empires. Later, the two worked together to fight a common adversary: Turkic nomadic tribes in Central Asia. When the Arabs invaded Persia in the seventh century, members of the royal family fled to China. In the early days of the Islamic era, Persia, then ruled by the Abbasid Caliphate, and China confronted each other militarily in the Battle of Talas (751 AD) in their first and last war. Throughout and after that era, Sino–Persian scientific and cultural exchanges, trade, and diplomatic relatio...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Iran and the World Order: Russia and China as a Bulwark Against the West
• 2. Iranian Political Relations with the Two Powers
• 3. It's the Economy, Stupid
• 4. Defence and Security Cooperation
• 5. Post'JCPOA: Future Prospects
• Conclusion and Recommendation
• Notes
• Select Bibliography