New alliance in Asia accelerates US decline
The China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement, signed last Saturday, poses a new challenge to Washington.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this, Kommersant writes.
The full text of the document has not yet been made public, but Beijing has pledged to invest $25 billion in Iran over 400 years, according to The New York Times. In addition, the agreement should strengthen defense, intelligence and anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries and contribute to Iran’s more active involvement in the implementation of China’s main integration initiative, “One Belt, One Road.”
US President Joe Biden has already expressed concern about the alliance of geopolitical opponents, and State Department head Antony Blinken said that “more and more aspects are emerging in relations with China that increase confrontation.”
“Biden's concerns are completely justified. The flourishing of strategic cooperation in the East will accelerate the decline of the United States,” Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, wrote in turn on social networks.
“The emerging alliance of oil-rich Iran, which occupies a leading position in the Middle East, and the world’s second-largest economy, China, united to confront Washington, is becoming a new challenge for the United States and its allies. It is highly symbolic that each side took this difficult step, revising its foreign policy strategies, which had remained unchanged for decades,” the article notes.
Thus, Beijing had previously avoided participating in any alliances, and Iran limited its foreign policy to allied relations with pro-Iranian forces in the Middle East and the neighboring Asian region.
“However, pressure from the United States, which called China the “main threat” and returned to the confrontational model of relations with Iran, forced Tehran and Beijing to rely on consolidation, allowing them to nullify some of the American sanctions and create leverage in retaliatory pressure on the United States,” the newspaper points out.
Formally, the agreement with China needs the approval of the Iranian parliament, but Tehran is already talking about concluding a similar pact with Moscow.
“In addition to China, the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to sign long-term and strategic documents with Russia that will strengthen bilateral economic ties and pave the way for joint activities,” said the head of the Iranian parliamentary commission on national security and foreign policy.
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