The China-Iran Axis Beijing gains influence and helps Tehran evade U.S. sanctions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-china-iran-axis-11617059716?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
Anyone who thought the world would warm to U.S. interests once Donald Trump left the scene has received a rude awakening in the last two months. The latest sign is the weekend’s pact between China and Iran, an example of U.S. adversaries uniting to advance their strategic ambitions.
The two sides signed what they described as a 25-year “strategic partnership” that amounts to a significant deepening of ties. China will invest several hundred million dollars in a variety of Iranian projects, including nuclear power, ports, and oil and gas development. In return China will get a steady supply of Iranian oil. The two will also deepen their defense cooperation as China will transfer some military technology.
Apologists for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are saying this doesn’t add up to more than the status quo, and thus shouldn’t interfere with renewed U.S. courtship of Iran. Don’t believe them. This is a big deal that advances the strategic interests of both sides—at the expense of the U.S. and stability in the Middle East.
The deal helps Iran dodge American sanctions, and the cash infusion will ease economic pressure on the ruling mullahs. Iran will have a long-time buyer for its oil exports that were reduced by U.S. sanctions. The foreign-exchange income, if that’s how the payments are made, will finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and proxy forces in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
The countries will also form a Chinese-Iranian bank with the aim of evading the U.S. dollar dominance in world trade that gives U.S. sanctions their bite. Breaking the dollar’s hold on global trade and finance is a major goal of Russia, China and Iran. China believes that U.S. fiscal profligacy is putting the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency at risk, and they want the Chinese yuan to replace it.
The deal expands China’s influence in the Middle East, which it wants for access to energy and raw materials as well as to increase its economic sway. China has also been courting the Saudis and Gulf states with economic lures. As the shale revolution has made the U.S. less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, those oil exporters need access to the China market. If the U.S. is seen as unreliable, these countries can hedge their bets with China. American influence in the Persian Gulf is not a birthright.
The China-Iran tie also complicates U.S. strategic interests. President Biden and Europe want Iran to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, but an Iran backed by China is under less pressure to do so. The same goes for aiding their Houthi proxies who want to take over Yemen. China and Russia can block any attempt to put more global pressure on Iran through the United Nations.
All of this shows the folly of believing that letting adversaries dominate their regions will have benign consequences the U.S. can ignore. American isolationists on the right and left want to grant Russia, China and Iran “spheres of influence” and have the U.S. retreat.
But the more powerful they become in their regions, the more these adversaries are likely to cooperate on a global scale to undermine American economic and security interests. Think Iran and Russia in Syria; or China and Russia evading United Nations sanctions to aid North Korea; or China and Russia working through Cuba to prop up Venezuela’s regime.
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President Biden and his team of liberal internationalists say they want to revive the “rules-based” international order that they think Mr. Trump dismantled. It’s a pleasant fiction. That order was already eroding with the rise of these regional adversaries, who extended their influence with little American challenge during Barack Obama’s Presidency. The notion that the U.N. and other multinational institutions that include these adversaries are going to enforce global rules against their rogue allies defies experience. They will undermine those rules when it serves their interests.
The world is becoming more dangerous, never mind Mr. Biden’s hopes. North Korea is again firing missiles, China is threatening Taiwan more aggressively, Iran is adding to its nuclear violations, and Russia continues to undermine U.S. purposes wherever it can. While Mr. Biden is preoccupied with “transforming” the U.S. economy, the world is also transforming—and not in a good way.
If Mr. Biden wants to restore the rules-based global order, the U.S. and its allies will have to do it. They can start by dropping illusions about the designs of their adversaries.
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