China’s small naval exercise with Iran last month was unremarkable in its military importance but helps illustrate the larger strategic calculations facing Beijing as China tries to manage its trilateral relationship with Tehran and Washington. China and the United States agree on the need to constrain Iran’s nuclear program but differ on how best to achieve this objective. Although China wants Iranian energy, the United States is a much more important partner for China than is Iran. But both China and Iran each seek to manipulate their relationship to gain leverage in Washington.
The most interesting aspect of China’s joint navy exercise with Iran last month was how uninteresting it was.
China only sent two warships, and these vessels were already in the nearby Gulf of Aden region rather than sent specially from China for the occasion. The ships did not engage in large-scale drills in the Persian Gulf, which they could have done in an effort to deter possible future U.S. efforts to impede China’s access to the region’s vital oil deliveries or to retaliate for recent U.S. military exercises with China’s territorial rivals in the Pacific. Like the Iranian navy ship visit to the Chinese port of Zhangjiagang in March 2013, this year’s reciprocal visit has not seen any visible follow-through, such as a Chinese Navy access deal to Iranian ports. The visit resembles those engagements that the Chinese Navy has been conducting with many other counties as it expands its deployments beyond China’s vicinity.
But Beijing’s relationship with Tehran is anything but ordinary—above all due to the trilateral dimensions of the China-Iran-US relationship.
Chinese policy makers have never placed relations with Iran in the same category as such vital interests for Beijing as Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, North Korea, or the disputed islands China claims in the East and South China Sea. Iran is physically distant from China, Beijing is indifferent to Iran’s form of government, Iranians have not threatened China directly or through supporting terrorism, and China has many alternative energy suppliers and commercial partners.
Iran has been striving to develop security ties with foreign countries, especially great powers like China, to break out of its regional isolation. Most of Iran’s neighbors see the Iranian military as a potential adversary rather than a possible partner. Iran has conducted several drills with Russia, though these have focused on the Caspian Sea, which lies between them, rather than the Gulf. China has conducted a few direct engagements in recent years, but its main defense connection with Iran remains arms sales rather than bilateral military exercises.
However, along with Russia, China is Iran’s most important foreign security and economic partner. China supplies Iran with some of its major defense technologies and Beijing has used its veto in the UN Security Council to block many sanctions on Iran. Beijing and Tehran share important interests in Central Asia, including countering Sunni-inspired Islamist terrorism and balancing Western influence in the region, and their parallel policies regarding Syria and some other issues have proved mutually reinforcing.
The United States has sought to limit China’s economic and security ties with Iran pending a resolution of the Iranian nuclear dispute and improvements in other Iranian foreign and domestic policies. The U.S. sanctions against Tehran have increased China’s commercial presence in Iran by denying Iranians alternative economic partners, but Beijing still opposes them for fear that Washington is pursuing regime change in Tehran under the guise of nonproliferation. A more radical Iranian government could support Uighur militants using terrorism to achieve their region’s independence from Beijing. Conversely, a more pro-Western government in Tehran could more easily reorient the Iranian economy westward, to China’s economic loss.
China also benefits from strained Iranian-U.S. ties because they enhance Beijing’s diplomatic and economic leverage with both sides. U.S. diplomats regularly urge their Chinese counterparts to communicate restraining messages to Iran’s leadership, while Iranians curb their irritation at some Chinese actions to avoid weakening their relationship with Beijing.
However, Chinese leaders consider their commercial relations with the United States more important than their economic ties with Iran. Chinese officials have consistently encouraged Tehran to constrain its nuclear program and reach a limited nuclear deal with Washington that would reduce the risks of war, more sanctions, and other threats to Iranian interests. The Chinese and U.S. positions regarding Iran’s nuclear policies have been converging in recent years. U.S. negotiators have joined their Chinese counterparts in seeking to contain rather than eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. They have, at least de facto, accepted the Chinese view that Iran’s uranium-enrichment program has proceeded too far to be completely eliminated, and that the best outcome they could reasonably hope to achieve is to keep this capacity limited and transparent to external monitoring.
The future relationships between Iran and the other great powers, including China and the United States, depend on how much power President Hassan Rouhani and the moderates can sustain in Tehran, specifically for shaping Iranian foreign policy; whether the parties can reach a final nuclear deal; how rapidly Iranian-Western relations might improve, and how China-U.S. tensions in other areas might affect Iran’s position. Developments in Iraq, where all three parties are de facto backing the Baghdad government against the Islamic State terrorist movement, also demonstrates how unanticipated developments could shape their future ties.
