My first, and indeed only, reaction to this news story was: ‘Duhh!’ If this news story surprised you in any way, clearly you have not been paying attention. Quite frankly I am surprised that this deal, or one very similar to it, didn’t happen sooner.
Though I suppose that the current situation being what it is between China and the United States, this was probably as good a time as any. Our last bumblingly-inept president managed to piss off both Iran and China at around the same time - the first with the assassination of Soleimani; and the second with the whole trade war / ‘muh IP theft’ / student espionage / ‘China virus’ fearmongering strategy for red-meat domestic consumption by mouthbreathing boomer conservatives. And now our current bumblingly-inept president, every bit as bad as our previous one, is both dragging his heels on renewing the Iran deal (which was one of his campaign promises), and continuing to ramp up the anti-China rhetoric for red-meat domestic consumption by mouthbreathing boomer ‘humanitarian’ liberals.
China tries cooperating with us for decades on trade, and gets little back but diplomatic abuse and snubbing. Iran tries cooperating with us on security and nuclear proliferation issues (in good faith: just ask the IAEA over the past two decades), and gets literally nothing back for its efforts, except the assassination of their scientists and generals by America and our allies. Not to be rude or anything, but what the FRACK did you all expect? Did anyone really expect that Iran and China would come running to us serving tea and dumplings after this kind of treatment? Of fracking course they’re going to start cooperating with each other more, and cut us out of the loop.
Iran gets pressured from the west by the unholy Salafi-Zionist alliance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel (with props from America): they look east. China gets pressured from the east by the Five Eyes nations plus Japan: they look west. Not to mention the ideologically-motivated anti-China sniping by Erdoğan which has managed to push Armenia closer into China’s orbit. Both Iran and China find they have the same enemy on either side, and so they become friendly. This is how defensive realism works, folks. This is how gæostrategy works. Even if Iran and China, to put it mildly, do not see eye to eye on a number of ideological and religious issues, they are going to put these aside when national survival and vital interests are in play. Just ask the khaghans of Kazakhstan going back three hundred years, for crying out loud. Do you think they turned up a nose at heathen Buddhist Manchu assistance when they were being slaughtered by the Dzunghars? No. Or do you think that they turned down assistance from the Russians when the Qing in turn started to look too threatening?
So here’s the thing that the perpetually-clueless (because paid to be so) American journalists at WaPo and the NY Times (the latter of which literally lies about China’s motivations in allying with Iran) finally need to get through their skulls - or rather, what their readership does. As the great American folk singer-songwriter Greg Brown once famously put it: ‘This world ain’t what you think it is, it’s just what it is.’ America needs to learn the lesson fast (and honestly should have learned that fifty years ago), that the days are gone when we can just walk all over Asian folks with impunity without them teaming up, standing up and fighting back however they can.
