After the agreement of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, among the questions Tehran might ask about the past 12 days is, where were its powerful friends in Beijing and Moscow?
China and Russia offered rhetorical support to Iran but both made clear from the start of the crisis that neither would do anything that might carry a cost in terms of their diplomatic or economic interests.
China, Russia and Pakistan drafted a resolution at the United Nations Security Council in the hours after the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. China’s foreign ministry, which had been quick to denounce Israel’s campaign against Iran, said the US action seriously violated the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law.
Russia also condemned the US attacks, making a public display of warmth towards Tehran by inviting Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Araghchi said before the meeting that he expected serious negotiations with the Russian president.
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“Russia is a friend of Iran, we have a strategic partnership. We always consult with each other and co-ordinate our positions,” he said.
When they met, Putin again condemned the attacks on Iran but declined to mention the US by name and said Russia was “making efforts to help the Iranian people”. A Kremlin spokesman said the US action in Iran would not affect the relationship between Moscow and Washington and he was vague about the nature of the help Putin promised, beyond saying “we have offered our mediation services”.
Iran, China and Russia are all members of the Brics and of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and Tehran has bilateral partnership agreements with both Moscow and Beijing. But none of these agreements have counted for much in the past two weeks as Tehran found itself isolated in the face of overwhelming force from its technologically superior adversaries in the US and Israel.
The Moscow-Tehran Treaty signed last January promised a 20-year strategic partnership including joint military exercises and intelligence sharing. And Iran offered military support to Russia for almost a decade when Moscow was shoring up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
China signed a 25-year comprehensive co-operation agreement with Iran in 2021, promising to invest $400 billion (€345 billion) in the Islamic republic’s economy. But while the deal has secured privileged access for Beijing to Iranian oil, it has produced few deals for Iranian businesses hoping for Chinese investment.
One reason for this is Chinese firms’ nervousness about violating US sanctions against Iran, which could have repercussions for their business elsewhere in the world. Another is that China’s economic focus in the Middle East is on the Arab Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
When US secretary of state Marco Rubio asked China to dissuade Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, he was pushing at an open door. Most of the oil that is shipped through the strait is destined for Asia and China, which depends on an uninterrupted supply from the Middle East.
This means that stability in the region is more valuable to Beijing than any cost or distraction a war with Iran might create for the US. And as the world’s major nuclear powers, China, Russia and the US agree that Iran should not be in a position to develop a nuclear weapon.
In any renewed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme that may follow the ceasefire, Tehran will be under pressure to abandon its enrichment of uranium altogether. Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium for peaceful, civilian purposes but Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to come to Tehran’s aid in exercising that right.
