At the BRICS+ summit in New Delhi last weekend, there were few overt signs of affection between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. In fact, there was no public interaction between the two at all.
Xi spent less than a day in India, meeting with his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and briefly courting Global South support for his security governance initiative. There are no reports that he spoke to Pezeshkian.
It was a notable display of distance between two countries often portrayed as strategic partners.
MBN’s inaugural Great Powers Index, released on Tuesday, places Iran closer to China than any other country in the MENA region.
The relationship is more complicated than the data suggests, however. While China is Iran’s most important economic partner, Beijing has shown little interest in tying its broader Middle East strategy to Tehran.
“I don’t think China wants to appear to be particularly cozy with Iran at this time,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank. “Xi has been much more overt in extending support, or at least the message of support, to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
The distancing dynamic was also evident last month at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Xi held formal, photographed meetings with Putin, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov. Pezeshkian got a brief sideline meeting and considerably less attention.
The relationship between Beijing and Tehran has always been heavily driven by economics. China got cheap Iranian oil, while Iran got badly needed revenue and access to Chinese goods.
Iran sends more exports to China than to any other country, and relies heavily on Chinese imports. But it’s not a relationship of equals: the Islamic Republic accounts for less than 1 percent of China’s global trade.
In 2021, China and Iran sought to cement their friendship with a sweeping 25-year cooperation agreement covering energy, infrastructure, trade and security cooperation.
Officials in both countries hailed it as evidence of a deepening strategic partnership and a shared commitment to long-term development.
But Matthew Johnson of the Jamestown Foundation said the deal also sparked unease among Iranians sensitive to the perception that the country is a satellite of a stronger power.
“Iran has enough state capacity, for lack of a better word, and enough kind of civilizational pride that they don’t fawn over Chinese money the way a lot of other countries do,” Johnson said.
Iran’s own reluctance to appear overly “forward-leaning” toward China is another reason Beijing has been cautious about embracing Tehran more closely, Sun said.
The bottom line is that there has been much less investment since the 2021 agreement than many analysts expected.
Beijing, meanwhile, has also spent recent years cultivating relationships across the Gulf — including with countries that remain among Washington’s closest regional partners, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia is now one of China’s largest oil suppliers, and Chinese firms have invested heavily in the UAE. Both countries have been targeted by Iranian missiles.
There have been sporadic reports of China helping expand Iran’s capabilities. For example, the Wall Street Journal on Saturday reported that Tehran had acquired high-resolution images of a U.S. base in Jordan from “Chinese entities.”
That base was hit by Iran in an attack that killed three U.S. soldiers. The report didn’t name the entities, and Sun suggested that the imagery might have come from Iran’s preexisting arrangements to use China’s BeiDou global positioning system.
President Trump sought to downplay the connection, but the extent to which China, or its entities, has helped expand Tehran’s capabilities may come up at the meeting between the two leaders later this month.
China’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that it follows international law and opposes attempts to “smear” the country by linking it to the Iran conflict.
Whatever assistance China has provided, Beijing appears to have little sway over Iran’s conduct of the war.
Liu Chang, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in an email to MBN that China “supports” Iran’s efforts to safeguard its security, territorial integrity and “national dignity.” But it also encourages “dialogue and negotiation” as the “right way forward.”
Sun of the Stimson Center said: “We often say the true criteria for influence over another nation is whether you can persuade it to adopt a decision that is not seen by them as in their national interests.”
“I don’t think China has that over Iran, or Russia or North Korea,” she said. “Just like we are not able to persuade Israel to adopt a policy that is perceived to be not in line with their interest either.”
