What Iran has gained from Pezeshkian's trip to China – and what it hasn't

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, China, on September 2. Reuters

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in China this week to deepen his country’s engagement with the East, particularly as relations have hit rock bottom with the West.

Earlier this year, Iran’s nuclear talks with the US collapsed after the latter joined Israel in a 12-day war against it in June. Tehran has traditionally enjoyed better ties with European powers than with America, but its support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine has turned them away, too.

Last week, France, Germany and the UK invoked the so-called “snapback” mechanism in their 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, thereby kickstarting a 30-day period during which Tehran must reach a new agreement with them or risk triggering UN sanctions that had been lifted after the deal was concluded 10 years ago.

With the Iranian economy in a terrible state – largely due to a slew of international sanctions against it – and with its currency having plunged to a historic low, Dr Pezeshkian flew to China to find new avenues that could help drag his country out of its current struggles.

In his speech at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, the Iranian President called for a “diplomatic solution and a peaceful resolution” to the crisis stemming from his country’s nuclear programme. He said the US-Israel attacks on Iran had failed, having been “faced with heroic resistance by the Iranian people”. He criticised the European troika’s plan to reinstate the snapback sanctions as having “complicated the situation and heightened the tensions”. He also echoed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call – presumably aimed at the West – for enacting reforms to the global governance framework.

Aware that his outreach to western powers would fall on deaf ears, Dr Pezeshkian used the SCO summit as an avenue to strengthen his country’s partnerships with China and Russia, and foster relations with other non-western countries whose delegations were present.

Iran’s economic troubles and the heavy sanctions against it have long complicated its ability to do business with the rest of the world, whether in the East or the West

He held a two-hour-long meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during which he lauded Tehran’s ties to Moscow. For his part, Mr Putin sent greetings to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and noted the rising number of Iranian students in Russia and increasing tourism between the two countries.

Dr Pezeshkian met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, too, with a video of the two leaders holding hands and walking together going viral on social media. He also engaged with the Chinese, Tajik and Pakistani leaders. And for what it’s worth, the final declaration of the summit included a strong condemnation of the US-Israel attacks on Iran, deeming them to be a violation of international law, the UN Charter and Iranian sovereignty.

Regardless of the optics, however, it’s important to ask what Tehran can tangibly get out of its relations with the East in the short to medium term. The picture is murky.

The summit in Tianjin was, of course, further proof that a multi-polar world has well and truly emerged – one in which the hitherto dominant West is gradually waning.

While Mr Putin may be something of a persona non grata in parts of the western world today, and the International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant against him for Moscow’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine, the Russian President is mostly well received in the East. He has met Mr Xi on numerous occasions in recent years, and he received a warm welcome in China this week.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had productive meetings with Mr Putin and Mr Xi, at a time when New Delhi is being pressured by Washington to stop buying oil from Russia owing to its war in Ukraine. With US President Donald Trump’s tariff war with India coming to a head, images of the Chinese, Russian and Indian leaders huddled together and sharing laughs will have drawn plenty of attention, and perhaps even some unease, in the West.

Keeping these geopolitical shifts in mind, many in Iran hope for deeper ties between their government and those in the East, particularly with China.

An Iranian analyst this week said Tehran should seek help from the Chinese “red dragon” to fight off the American “eagle”. Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Tuesday backed Dr Pezeshkian’s China visit and called for Tehran and Beijing to work together “to shape the regional order and a fairer world”. He said the Tianjin summit was a “historic opportunity to counter unilateralism”, and that the two countries’ “development and security” are tied together “historically and geopolitically”.

However, Iran’s economic troubles and the heavy sanctions against it have long complicated its ability to do business with the rest of the world, whether in the East or the West. This partially explains why Tehran’s stated goal of becoming a member of the SCO in 2023 hasn’t resulted in tangible economic benefits yet.

Sure, China is Iran’s top trade partner and buys more than 90 per cent of its oil. And yes, some of this trade is done using the Chinese yuan or through “oil for commodity” deals, thereby circumventing the use of the US dollar. But these workarounds have limitations. Chinese firms routinely face the threat of sanctions for dealing with Tehran, and they are often forced to choose between trading with the West and Iran. It comes as little surprise, then, that the terms of whatever trade Tehran can actually do are usually not in its favour.

In any case, China has other trade partners in the Middle East, including the Arab Gulf countries and Israel, which might explain why Beijing provided little tangible support to Tehran during the 12-day war. And now, some experts worry about the adverse impact the snapback sanctions – if they come into effect – could have on its limited trade ties.

Iran no doubt can, and should, nurture relations with the East. But the only way it can make an economic recovery is for it to begin the process of both drawing down existing sanctions against it and avoiding new or suspended ones. For this, it has little option but to de-escalate tensions with the West, particularly the US – whether it likes it or not.