(March 30, 2021 / JNS) While Israel was busy with the domestic political imbroglio surrounding last week’s Knesset elections, a strategic threat that could threaten the country’s very existence was developing. If the Iranian-Chinese alliance reaches its full potential, the Middle East could once again be dragged into a new cold war between superpowers.

Soviet support for the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radical policies ensured him regional hegemony that threatened Israel for more than a decade. The American attempt to placate the Egyptian leader only made things worse.

Now, massive Chinese assistance to the radical regime in Tehran could provide Iran support in its attempts to impose its hegemony on the region within the framework of another kind of cold war now developing between Washington and Beijing. Such Chinese support, along with U.S. President Joe Biden’s conciliatory tone, could pose the kind of strategic threat Israel has not seen since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In recent years, Israel has faced an escalating war with Iran in an attempt to prevent it from attaining the kind of power that would allow it to construct massive military infrastructure around its borders. Iran understands that only Israel can thwart its aspirations for hegemony. It has tried to deter Israel by threatening its population centers.

Most Arab regimes have also come to understand that only Israel is strong and determined enough to stop the ayatollahs. While the United States is more important, it is less reliable and determined. These Arab states were appalled by former U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach but temporarily encouraged by that of his successor, Donald Trump.

Under Biden, they have begun to worry once again. That is the meaning of the Abraham Accords. In many ways, the old, familiar Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been replaced by an Arab-Israeli coalition that opposes Iran and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and is suspicious of the new U.S. administration.

Trump’s determined stance offered a comprehensive response to the Iranian challenge. It did not relate merely to the nuclear threat.

A focused response in the form of the 2015 nuclear deal, which effectively bolstered Tehran’s position, does not effectively meet the challenge. What is required is a zero-sum game that seeks to harm Iran, mainly in the economic arena, and deters it from conflict by ensuring U.S. support for Israel’s military actions it.

When Iran engaged in numerous provocations against Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, Trump responded by assassinating Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force. Tehran didn’t dare offer a suitable response to the painful and humiliating blow it was dealt. But the main tool was sanctions that hit Iran’s economy to such an extent that, had they been in place for another four years, the ayatollah regime would have been unlikely to survive.

We are now witnessing something reminiscent of what we saw under the late U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower: deep economic and military involvement by a superpower competing with the U.S. and a conciliatory response from Washington.

China’s foreign minister signed a 25-year strategic deal, first drawn up during Chinese President Xi Ji Ping’s 2016 visit to Iran, aimed at increasing bilateral trade tenfold, to $600 billion in 10 years. The deal will provide China with priority access to huge investments in Iranian infrastructure, banking, and communications.

The agreement also allows for joint military exercises and military cooperation in the future. In return, China is set to provide Iran with vast amounts of oil and gas in the long-term at relatively low rates.

This kind of agreement serves to effectively neutralize U.S. economic pressure, seriously bolsters Iran’s bargaining position, and could herald a renewed Iranian effort toward regional hegemony. The rate of its realization and its characteristics depend crucially on U.S.-China ties. This is a very important Chinese bargaining chip in the international area—one that was suspended under Trump and pulled out once again under Biden, with significant repercussions for Israel.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-iran-china-deal-is-cause-for-israeli-concern/

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China says Iran’s foreign minister will visit the country from Friday to Saturday, a day after the Trump administration blacklisted virtually all of Iran’s financial sector in the latest step aimed at the oil-rich country’s economy.

In a brief announcement, China’s Foreign Ministry said only that Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was visiting at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. China has been a staunch Iranian ally and remains a party to the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement from which the U.S. has withdrawn while unilaterally reinstituting punishing sanctions on Iran.

Thursday’s U.S. move hits 18 Iranian banks that had thus far escaped the bulk of reimposed U.S. sanctions and subjects foreign, non-Iranian financial institutions to penalties for doing business with them. That effectively cuts them off from the international financial system.

The blacklisting has been opposed by European nations because it will open up their biggest banks and other companies to U.S. penalties for conducting business with Iran that had previously been allowed.

Zarif reacted angrily to the designations, calling them a “crime against humanity” at a time of global crisis. The move comes as the U.S. has stepped up efforts to kill the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by steadily increasing pressure on through sanctions on its oil sales, blacklisting top government officials and killing a top general in an air strike.

Almost the entire rest of the world has vowed to ignore the latest U.S. sanctions but violating them will come with significant risk of losing access to the U.S. financial system.

The Chinese ministry said Indonesia’s presidential special envoy for China, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, and Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. are visiting Beijing at the same time as Zarif. There was no indication whether they will meet with Wang as a group.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-iran-foreign-minister-to-visit-china-following-us-sanctions/

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during a meeting in Beijing, China, on Dec. 31, 2019. NOEL CELIS/POOL/GETTY IMAGES

Recent reports of an ambitious 25-year comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between Iran and China have reverberated across Southwest Asia and beyond. The agreement raises the question of whether we are witnessing a tectonic shift in Asia’s geostrategic landscape or merely a marriage of convenience. The answer is not yet clear, but the agreement will likely face several hurdles, and may have unintended consequences by drawing China into the vortex of Middle Eastern politics.

Word of the agreement comes amid rising tensions between Iran and the United States. Iran’s economy has been devastated by U.S. sanctions, and the agreement could offer Tehran a lifeline and potential leverage against Washington. Indeed, the leak of the impending agreement may have been a message intended to signal to a U.S. audience that Iran can frustrate the United States’ so-called maximum pressure campaign by aligning closely with China.

China’s relations with the United States also have deteriorated sharply, but it would be a mistake to categorize the agreement as simply another example of a recent flurry of assertive Chinese moves. Instead, the agreement is best understood through the lens of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to connect China economically with major markets in Asia, Europe, and Africa, as well as making China’s long-term energy supplies more secure, and consolidating China’s overall strategic position in the Gulf. A partnership with Tehran offers Beijing a geostrategic foothold in a prime location.

The $400 billion worth of projects purportedly envisioned would represent China’s largest agreement to date for any single country in the BRI, dwarfing the next biggest investment of $62 billion planned as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. They are said to include railways, ports, subways, oil and gas production, telecommunications, manufacturing, and military cooperation. In return, Iran has apparently agreed to provide China with heavily discounted oil.

The agreement should not be judged solely in commercial terms, which will always be difficult to achieve, but rather by its strategic impact. In this respect, a partnership with Tehran offers Beijing a geostrategic foothold in a prime location, allowing it to complete a vital segment of a BRI corridor tracing the ancient Silk Road linking Western China with the Middle East and Europe.

But it would be a mistake to assume that all will go smoothly with the China-Iran agreement.  Implementation will face considerable challenges that neither country may fully appreciate. Among these are Iran’s unhappy experiences with great powers, which have left an indelible mark on the country’s collective psyche. Historical memories of the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay in which Iran ceded territory to Russia, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran during World War II, and the U.S.-British backed overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 run deep among Iranians. The revolutionary slogan “neither East nor West” captured the essence of Iran’s suspicion of the designs of great powers.

Given this history, many Iranians are reflexively suspicious about the China-Iran agreement and have accused the government of selling the country’s assets on the cheap. This popular sentiment cannot be ignored. In practice, Iran may slow-roll, renegotiate, or even cancel projects agreed upon with China, especially if it manages to reestablish commercial relations with the West.

The Middle East’s fierce rivalries and active conflicts will also present challenges. Beijing certainly wants to avoid the kind of military entanglements that have bogged down Washington in the region even as it benefits from a U.S. security umbrella to advance its interests. Yet history suggests that the economic, political, and military interests of great powers are inexorably intertwined. As its economic interests in the Middle East grow, China will find it increasingly difficult to remain neutral on political and security questions in a region where the principal actors expect great powers to take their side.

This puts China in a quandary. It wants to build a strategic relationship with Iran even as it cultivates closer ties with key regional players Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. In fact, China is also negotiating comprehensive strategic partnerships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Yet these countries view Iran as an existential threat, and China risks alienating them if it empowers their archrival.

In 2018, China’s combined trade with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel was three and half times greater than its trade with Iran ($123 billion versus $35 billion). And just days before word of the China-Iran agreement leaked, Chinese and Arab League foreign ministers adopted the Amman Declaration, with Arab states endorsing China’s central foreign policy concept of “a community with a shared future for mankind.” Such considerations may explain why Beijing has not officially confirmed that it is on the verge of an agreement with Iran.

China’s interest in sustaining good relationships with the Arab Gulf monarchies and Israel raises the intriguing question of whether it is prepared to use its prospective investments in Iran as leverage to curb Iranian policies that threaten others in the region, especially the support for Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. This is unlikely. China’s deep foreign-policy instinct is to stay out of regional rivalries and wherever possible to sit on the fence. But the sheer dimensions of this prospective strategic partnership with Iran may well cause the Gulf monarchies and Israel to conclude that China has now decisively tilted in the direction of their nemesis.

I observed China’s interaction with Iran as a participant in international nuclear negotiations with Tehran from 2009 to 2013. China was typically the most reticent party at the table, but it also had the ability to get Iran’s attention and affect its calculus in ways that others could not. It has even greater influence with Iran today, but failing to exercise it to moderate Tehran’s regional behavior may end up jeopardizing Beijing’s long-term economic strategy in the Middle East, which ultimately is best served by strategic stability.

That strategy aims to draw the region into China’s economic orbit and to secure reliable sources of oil. It relies on the BRI model of infrastructure investment and economic development, which includes a heavy emphasis on the construction of ports and railways to promote economic connectivity. China’s conviction appears to be that refocusing the Middle East’s attention toward economic development will have a transformative effect.

As the world’s largest oil importer since 2017, China is increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern energy. Last year, Saudi Arabia became China’s top supplier of oil. And three Middle Eastern countries—Iraq, the UAE, and Iran—are also among the largest suppliers.

Oil dependence brings with it exposure to the region’s political volatility. A vivid example of this axiom is a suspected Iranian attack last September against the Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia which temporarily took 5 percent of global oil production offline and caused oil prices to spike by 15 percent.

China’s conviction appears to be that refocusing the Middle East’s attention toward economic development will have a transformative effect in lowering tensions that have become an endemic feature of the region. But advancing connectivity across a disjointed landscape will be no easy feat. What China sees as a win-win may be interpreted by countries in the region as playing both sides.

Thus far, Beijing has managed to enjoy positive and growing ties with the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and Iran. Each of them sees tremendous value in Chinese investment and know-how. But the region’s reaction to the massive scope of investments in the potential China-Iran agreement may force China to either scale back its planned engagement with Iran or enter unchartered waters and use traditional statecraft to more actively address Gulf Arab and Israeli concerns with Iranian policies. It will be reluctant to acknowledge that it faces such a choice, but the harsh realities of the Middle East may soon make that clear.

Puneet Talwar is a former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs and a former special assistant to former President Barack Obama. Twitter: @PuneetTalwarDC

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/17/china-is-getting-mired-in-the-middle-east/

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A study published by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University has reviewed the history of arms deals between China, some Arab countries and Iran.

China’s arms exports to the Middle East began in the mid-1970s, and by 2017 it reached $12.73bn. Most of the Chinese arms sales in this area, which amounted to $8.8bn in total value, took place in the 1980s, during which China sold arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, China’s weapon exports to the Middle East fell to $1.8bn, mostly directed to Iran. This decline continued in the first decade of the 21st century, reaching $1.4bn, with a majority of exports to Iran and Egypt.

The value of Chinese arms exports between 2010 and 2017 reached $468mn, accounting for 3.7 per cent of China’s total military exports to the world, which reached $12.5bn. Thus, Russian and US weapon exports to the Middle East during this period amounted to $6.1bn and $30.1bn, respectively.

Chinese arms deal with Middle East countries

China signed the first security deal with a country in the Middle East, Egypt, in 1975. In the 1980s, the Egyptian authorities bought naval, items including submarines, missile boats and bombers Xi’an G-6 as well as fighter jets. At the turn of the 21st century, Egyptian military deals with China were focused on uncrewed aerial vehicles and the transfer of technology to manufacture such aircraft in Egypt. The two countries also signed an agreement to launch a second Egyptian satellite for surveillance.

Sino-Iraqi relations in the security field have begun in the 1980s, including deals where the Iraqi side bought fighter jets. This was done in parallel with other Chinese-Iranian deals, under which Iranian authorities also bought fighter jets during the Iran-Iraq war. The contracts also included Iraq’s purchase of anti-aircraft launchers and missiles. In contrast, the Iranian state focused its investments on rockets. After the war, Iraq bought drones from China; while, Iran has exported Chinese technology to develop its missile industry. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, a Hezbollah-launched sea-to-sea missile (SSM) hit the Israeli corvette, INS Ahi-Hanit, which Israel said was developed by Iran by Chinese C-802 missile technology. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), China has provided Iran with the necessary expertise in the manufacture of chemical weapons and chemical warheads for missiles, in addition to offering nuclear expertise.

Even though Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), China has also supplied arms to the Turkish authorities since the 1980s, including missile launchers and 200 short-range ballistic missiles. In 2013, a Chinese company won a Turkish tender for the purchase of missile defence systems. The deal provoked a wave of anger among NATO member countries, and since then, there were no reports of other arms deals between Turkey and China.

China has made deals with Saudi Arabia, supplying it with missiles with a range of thousands of kilometres, mobile gun systems and uncrewed aerial vehicles.

The development of Chinese security industries

The study said that “the security industries in China are now working to improve the quality of their products in all fields, as well as their ability to produce, and are gradually equating them with the Russian and even Western countries’ industries in certain areas.” According to a Pentagon report, China’s production of ballistic missiles, guided missiles, surface-to-air missiles and air-to-air missiles for its military use and export has improved significantly in recent years. Most of China’s ballistic and guided missiles are close regarding performance to parallel products made by Western countries and Russia, some of which are destined for export.

China’s commercial and military air industries have developed in recent years, according to the study, and are manufacturing large cargo planes and fighter jets of the fourth and fifth generation, modern uncrewed aircraft for reconnaissance and attack, and helicopters.

China has also developed its naval industrial capabilities, including the construction of submarines, missile carriers, naval aviation and other maritime means through the development and expansion of shipyards. According to the US Department of Defence, China is the world’s largest ship manufacturer. Its warships are equipped with advanced anti-aircraft and anti-submarine protection, and it is developing offensive capabilities in this field.

According to a report by the US Department of Defence, China’s production capacity continues to progress in all areas of ground armies’ weapons, including modern tanks and artillery, but sometimes at the expense of its quality.

The study indicated that China’s interest in the Middle East is increasing, and its interests are expanding by energy considerations and the removal of terrorism from its borders, which means the expansion of its political and economic benefits. The Middle East is China’s primary energy source, as it is supplied with oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Also, the Middle East is a critical crossroads for the export of its goods.

Conflicts in the Middle East, following the “Arab Spring” and the conflict between Iran and Arab countries, have increased the demand for security imports. At the same time, the United States has begun to withdraw from the region, since President Barack Obama. The study said that this situation will increase the volume of China’s security exports to the Middle East in parallel with the amount of Chinese trade and investment in the region, and that even China can compete with the United States, Russia and the West in certain areas, especially following Western countries’ reluctance to sell weapons in anticipation of war crimes committed using these arms, and China has replaced them.

Israeli fears

The study considered that the expansion of China’s security export to the Middle East would gradually pose an increasing challenge for Israel and the Israeli army for the following reasons:

First, China supplies weapons to Iran, which is an enemy state for Israel. Iran transfers that weapon or the weapon it develops by Chinese experience to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which constitute resistance movements against Israel.

Second, most of the Chinese weapons that reach the region are used by the Chinese army mainly, and not widely deployed in the world. Therefore, “there is a challenge in identifying and responding to their technical, technological and performance capabilities.”

Third, unlike the US arms sales to countries in the region, China does not have the necessary legislation to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge. China and Israel have no regular channel of dialogue on this issue.

Fourth, a growing Chinese export in areas where there is relative Israeli superiority, such as drones, increases competition for such an Israeli export to the world, including “pragmatic Sunni states.”The study concluded that “China’s arms production and security trade trends indicate that there is a possibility of change in this area and it requires increased Israeli follow-up. “The Israeli government should strive to open channels of dialogue with the Chinese government on the issue of security exports to the Middle East, through which it will be able to express its point of view and concern about the subject and try to reduce the risk that it might face. At the same time, the Israeli government and the Israel Security Agency should include this issue in the strategic dialogue with the United States, and reach common understandings on the development of these trends and the inevitability of its influence on the interests of the two countries, and the coordination of the actors of their policies regarding this subject.”

The research institute published the transactions in a book entitled Sino-Israel Relations: Opportunities and Challenges. The data attached to the study is based on information released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190111-israeli-concerns-about-chinese-weapons-in-middle-east/

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