Iran Set for Entry Into Expanding Club Led by China and Russia, With Iran the SCO has 46% of the world's gas and 21% of its oil reserves

[xizhimen]

Iran Set for Entry Into Expanding Club Led by China and Russia, With Iran the SCO has 46% of the world's gas and 21% of its oil reserves​

By Jonathan Tirone
2021年9月16日 GMT+8 上午11:00

• Shanghai Cooperation Organization seeks security via economy
• SCO summit is first foreign trip for Iran’s President Raisi

Iran’s new president is flying to Tajikistan for his first foreign trip where he’s expecting to gain membership of a growing Eurasian club led by China and Russia, whose economic muscle has helped Tehran blunt American sanctions.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or SCO, was founded two decades ago in St. Petersburg and currently has eight members representing half the world’s population and a quarter of its economic output.

Iran’s been angling to join the bloc that also includes India and Pakistan since 2005, with membership a key goal of conservatives who after the June election of President Ebrahim Raisi control all the levers of power. They want tighter economic integration with Beijing and Moscow to help replace some of the sanctioned trade with western economies.

Raisi has signaled his administration’s intention to rejoin stalled negotiations in Vienna over removing U.S. sanctions and curbing Iran’s nuclear program, but when talks will resume is unclear.

The SCO contains some mutual security elements, like a common approach to combating terrorism. However, its charter goals are heavily weighted toward trade and economic cooperation, including jointly developing “energy systems” and “balanced economic growth” without allowing any country to dominate. The group convenes for two days of meetings Thursday.

Eurasian Powerhouse?​

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said last month that political obstacles previously preventing Iran from joining the SCO had been removed. Russian media last week confirmed membership will be granted this week, while adding that the process could still take years to complete.

The meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, takes place amid mounting tension over Iran’s nuclear program, along with international efforts to revive the landmark 2015 agreement between the Islamic Republic and six world powers. Chinese and Russian diplomatic and financial support have helped buffer the impact of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden held a “strategic discussion” over shared interests with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week, just days after dispatching a top nuclear envoy to Moscow for talks over how to coax Iran back into compliance with the nuclear agreement.

“Of course we have differences of views,” U.S. negotiator Rob Malley said of China and Russia during an interview with Bloomberg this month. “But they’ve also urged Iran to come back to the table and take a realistic position.”

In addition to Iran’s membership, envoys at the SCO meeting are expected to discuss regional security after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even before the U.S. retreat last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was urging the bloc to more aggressively combat the “three evil forces” of terrorism, extremism and separatism, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

It’s unlikely Iranian membership will bring the SCO any immediate benefit, including over critical energy supplies, said Simon Pirani, a gas analyst at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Companies getting involved with Iran’s oil and gas sector are still subject to U.S. secondary sanctions, exposing them to risks if they help build the infrastructure Iran needs to raise production.

“The problems that face Iranian oil exports because of sanctions also pertain to gas,” Pirani said. “Iran’s domestic gas consumption is very high. So even though it’s one of the main producers, it consumes most of that gas domestically.”

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

 

[xizhimen]

China doesn't need money, China has more than enough money, what China needs is unlimited supply of natural resources to power China's mighty manufacturing and overal economic development juggernaut.

 

[Oublious]

thanks to america you made Iran a satelite state...

 

[xizhimen]

This is the alliance that China needs, all with vast, rich natural resources.

 

[Oublious]

This is the alliance that China needs, all with vast, rich natural resources.

yes, poor countries making more poor. china the biggest capitalism, they give you 2 and take 10 from you .

 

[xizhimen]

yes, poor countries making more poor. china the biggest capitalism, they give you 2 and take 10 from you .

Poor countries became poor because of China? Are you OK? Many poor countries became so poor actually because of the western colonization and plunder, China used to be one of them.

 

[xizhimen]

Iran looks east after China-led bloc OKs entry
8/09/2021 - 15:34

An Iranian man reads a copy of the daily newspaper "Etalaat" headlined, "Iran is a new member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation", at a kiosk in Tehran on September 18, 2021 ATTA KENARE AFP


Tehran (AFP)

Iran on Saturday hailed its acceptance into a China and Russia-led bloc, an eastward turn it sees as opening access to major world markets and a counter to crippling Western sanctions.

Conservative and reformist newspapers showed rare unity in welcoming the outcome of a conference in Dushanbe on Friday at which members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation endorsed Iran's future membership in the bloc.

The eight-member group, created two decades ago and which also includes India, promotes itself as an antidote to Western dominance.

The bloc's decision on Iran comes with negotiations at a standstill on bringing Washington back into a 2015 nuclear accord. Then president Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions.

"Iran integrates into the biggest market of the East," a headline in the Javan newspaper said, calling the SCO "one of the principal symbols of cooperation of non-Western powers opening the door to a post-American era."

Kayhan, like Javan an ultraconservative title, headlined its lead story in large type: "Deflecting Western sanctions."

In Kayhan's view, "from now on Iran can implement its policy of multilateralism, progressively abandon a vision based solely on the West and mitigate Western sanctions."

Etemad, a newspaper representing reformists who call for more social freedoms in the Islamic republic, expressed a view similar to that of the ultraconservatives.

It said SCO membership would permit Iran "to connect with markets" representing a major portion of the world's population.

Iran, one of four SCO observer states, had applied for full membership in 2008 but its bid was slowed by UN and US sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme.

Several SCO members did not want a country under international sanctions in their ranks.

- Investment opportunity -

The 2015 agreement, aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining an atomic bomb, provided economic relief in return for a sharp scaling back of the country's nuclear activities, but Trump's withdrawal started the deal's unravelling.


Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia remain in the agreement, and US President Joe Biden has expressed readiness to rejoin them but talks have so far made little headway.

Last year, Iran again failed to attain SCO membership because of a refusal by Tajikistan but on Friday it found the door to membership wide open.

For Iranian international relations expert Fayaz Zahed, Moscow and Beijing endorsed Tehran's membership because they expect the nuclear issue to be resolved.

"The SCO countries think Iran is going to abide by the international accords as the sanctions have been the main obstacle to its membership" in the bloc, Zahed told AFP.

Russia, China and India are all waiting for a lifting of the economic penalties so that they can invest in Iran, he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Iran's membership had been unanimously accepted.

SCO leaders did not, however, announce a timeline for Iran's accession.

Apart from Russia and China, the other founding members are the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

India and Pakistan were admitted in 2017.

Together they represent around 40 percent of the world's population and more than 20 percent of global gross domestic product -- an immense potential market for Tehran.

Iran's ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi, in his address to the SCO, called the sanctions "economic terrorism" and "the most important tool of the hegemonic powers for imposing their will on others."

Raisi, who succeeded moderate Hassan Rouhani in August, added that such economic penalties are "a major obstacle to the promotion of regional integration and the SCO should design structures and mechanisms to present a collective response to sanctions."

Two-way trade between Iran and SCO member states was valued at $28 billion (24 billion euros) for the Iranian year ended March 2021, according to Tehran.

China accounted for $18.9 billion of that.

But Iran sees political as well as economic benefits in the SCO.

"The world has entered a new era. Hegemony and unilateralism have failed," Raisi said.

"The international balance from now on leans towards multilateralism and the redistribution of powers towards independent countries. Unilateral sanctions don't uniquely target one country. It has become evident that, in recent years, they affect more the independent countries, especially SCO members."

Iran looks east after China-led bloc OKs entry - France 24

Iran looks east after China-led bloc OKs entry

www.france24.com

 

[Oublious]

Poor countries became poor because of China? Are you OK? Many poor countries became so poor actually because of the western colonization and plunder, China used to be one of them.

You are worst then west, stop blaming west.

 

[xizhimen]

You are worst then west, stop blaming west.

China hasn't fired a single shot to any countries for 40 years and the west has been invading, killing and bombing around the world, how come we are the worst?

 

[wolveray]

i

China hasn't fired a single shot to any countries for 40 years and the west has been invading, killing and bombing around the world, how come we are the worst?

I'_m afraid i will agree with you on this statement.
Many countries in the third world have been invaded and manipulated by west and yet china mostly trade with them.