June 17, 2022
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has met in Tehran with China’s external security minister, Cheng Guoping.
Iran’s state news agency said the pair “underlined the significance of implementing the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between the two countries.”
That agreement was signed in March 2021. The signing created much havoc in the national security establishment in Iran, with many people saying it meant the Islamic Republic was kneeling down to Beijing.
Iran signed the “strategic agreement” which was billed as the beginning of a new and much closer alliance between the two countries, but the main development since then is that trade has plummeted.
In fact, Iran is no longer among China’s five main trade partners in the Middle East, according to Majid-Reza Hariri, the head of the Iran-China Joint Chamber of Commerce.
Speaking to the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) a few months ago, Hariri said that until seven or eight years ago Iran was China’s primary trade partner in the Middle East and North Africa. But no more.
He said when the country is under sanctions, it has a few options even in talks with the Chinese, since major Chinese companies want to sell in the United States and Iran does not figure in their plans.
Hariri said China is currently the second largest economy in the world and its trade with others is many times more than with Iran; for this reason, sanctions definitely impede China’s trade with Iran.
There have been only minimal indicators of a China-Iran relationship since the strategic agreement was signed 15 months ago. The latest was the issuance of parallel sets of postage stamps December 11 to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of relations between the two countries.
