Energy Constructs Diplomacy――How long can the Relationship between China and Iran Step forward?

Iran has become a hot place in the ‘Energy Domain’ China has created. As the second largest producer of OPEC nations, Iran maintains 12 percent of global oil reserves and 18 percent of natural gas reserves. The output of oil accounts for 5 percent of global overall oil output. Compared with its reserves, Iran has great space for oil production increasing. Thus, increasingly tight Sino-Iran trade arouses the hope for political cooperation of the two countries.

Jalil Poshandel, visiting scholar of Department of Politics in Duke University, thinks that Iran is trying to find all chances to seek this possibility of making China a long-term strategic partner, but China is avoiding certain kinds of strategic partnership relation with Iran to happen due to the pressure of United States. After the Iraq-Iran War from 1980 to 1988, Iran faced U.S. embargo and economic sanction and had to turn to the east to fill up the diplomatic gap. The reason for Iran to choose China as the main trade partner is China’s competitive advantage internationally. Besides this, China always pursues the principle that economic relations are independent to politics and does not add into political problems into trade relations. Therefore, the bilateral trade increased greatly after the Iraq-Iran War ended. And China can not only gain economic benefits but also takes advantage of energy reservation from the trade relations of China and Iran.

Bijan Khajehpour, director of Atieh Bahar Consulting Firm which is positively boosting Iranian oil and gasoline strategies, reviewed the development of Sino-Iran relationship and analyzed the progress and foreground for it from the perspective of Iran’s history and national strategic diplomatic status quo. Gary Sick, acting dean of Middle-East College in Columbia University, gives his idea that Chinese senior officials’ visiting to Iran recently shows China’s political support to Iran. But Amirahmadi thinks that China will not develop strategic relationship with Iran, as Sino-U.S. relationship is evidently more important.