Date:
Author: Daniel Lincoln, Policy Research Analyst, Geopolitics, The China Institute, University of Alberta
Original article: https://theconversation.com/the-year-ahead-in-the-middle-east-a-weakened-iran-has-big-implications-for-china-245649
The wheels of history have been turning rapidly in the Middle East over the last year.
For a significant period of time, Iran’s status as a rising power within the region has been regarded as a consistent reality in assessing Middle Eastern geopolitics. But events since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel have seen Iran’s position in the region erode substantially. The balance of power in the Middle East has consequently been irreversibly altered.
A key pillar supporting Iran’s previously powerful status in the Middle East has been its cultivation of the “Axis of Resistance,” a group of Iranian allies across the region that acted together against Israeli and American interests.
The members of the axis, in addition to Iran itself, include Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Read more:
Assad’s fall in Syria will further weaken Hezbollah and curtails Tehran’s ’Iranization’ of region
Axis decimation
Israel’s relentless war in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack has seen several of the most important members of the axis severely diminished, if not entirely decimated.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas have been humiliated through the destruction of their respective leaderships, and their operational capacities have been reduced significantly.
The largest blow to Iran’s proxy network was arguably the recent ousting of Syria’s Assad, ending a decades-long regime that was regarded by top Iranian strategists as Iran’s most important regional ally.
(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The adverse consequences of these developments for Iran’s grand strategy raises questions of how a significantly weakened Iran will affect the world at large, especially in terms of its impact on great power politics in the Middle East.
This undoubtedly represents a welcome development in the United States given the long-standing animosity towards post-1979 Iran among the American foreign policy establishment. But China is likely to have a more nuanced outlook predicated upon its commitment to pragmatic foreign policy maneuvering in accomplishing its top global objectives.
China’s engagement with Iran
As China has grown richer and more powerful in recent decades, it’s turned its attention to increasing its diplomatic clout and economic presence throughout the world. Every region of the planet has been affected by this development, but the Middle East achieved a spot of particular importance for China.
The Chinese government’s motivation to deeply engage in the Middle East has been — and continues to be — driven by several key considerations: the Middle East’s status as a powerhouse of oil production, its strategic geographic location bridging east and west, and its status as a long-standing pillar of American foreign policy.
China has fostered bilateral partnerships across the entire Middle East, but one of its longest regional relationships has been with Iran. In Iran, Chinese authorities saw a country that provided it with an opportunity to help it achieve China’s main objectives in the region.
(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Post-1979, Iran was inherently anti-American, which meant that China was more likely to be warmly received by Tehran, especially when compared to other regional powers like Saudi Arabia that had relatively warm relations with the U.S.
Perhaps most importantly, Iran could be depended on — to an extent — to stymie American interests in the Middle East given its status as a rising regional power.
This is not to say that Iran became a Chinese client state, but rather that China could provide diplomatic and economic support to Iran as the Iranians used their power to act disruptively in a region of great strategic importance to the U.S.
China’s future moves
Given the motivations underlying deep Chinese-Iranian ties historically, it’s clear that the evaporation of Iran’s clout will likely greatly alter the character of their relationship moving forward.
In a nutshell, a significant portion of Iran’s appeal to Chinese policymakers has disappeared with the near annihilation of its regional network. This will likely encourage China to seek deeper ties with other Middle Eastern heavyweights, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in accomplishing its goals in the Middle East — chief among them, increasing its regional influence at the expense of the U.S.
But it’s also unlikely China will entirely abandon Iran. While it may focus its most concerted efforts on developing deeper ties with other Middle Eastern countries instead of Iran, China would likely be hesitant to see Iran become even further isolated and therefore more predisposed to behaving aggressively.
China was one of the main behind-the-scenes mediators of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal because it wanted regional tensions to dissipate via Iran’s abandonment of its nuclear program.
(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Now that Iran is weakened, it has essentially been boxed into a corner, and has two main options moving forward: either it achieves a rapprochement with the West, or it reinvigorates its nuclear program and acts more aggressively.
While Iran’s ultra-conservative factions that control the levers of power in the country may be tempted to take a more aggressive path, it is very possible China will attempt to use its substantial economic leverage over Iran to encourage them to pursue the rapprochement option.
That’s because the Chinese need the Middle East as a source of petroleum to fuel their economy, and because China doesn’t want to be viewed by the West as an implicit accomplice to a bellicose and destabilizing Iran.
China a moderating influence?
On the contrary, China is currently attempting to repair relations with many western countries given the importance of the West’s markets to China’s ailing economy.
In fact, China may wish to play a role in inducing Iran to strike a deal with the West in the near future, given that it would show the incoming Donald Trump administration — which is notoriously hawkish on China — that it can be trusted and worked with constructively.
At the end of the day, China will seek the path that minimizes the likelihood of full-blown conflict in the Middle East given the importance of the region to the Chinese economy. The country has a strategic opportunity to signal trustworthiness and dependability to the West by working to prevent Iran from choosing a more aggressive path.