China’s diplomatic moves with Middle Eastern powers are being closely watched after it pulled off the coup of negotiating the return of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran this spring.

Xi pointed out that Abbas was the first Arab leader to visit Beijing this year, in the wake of his reelection as president by the Chinese Communist Party, which underlined the importance of Sino-Palestinian relations. He and Abbas went on to announce a strategic partnership between China and Palestine, saying, “The Chinese side is keen to seize this opportunity to enhance in a comprehensive manner friendly cooperation with the Palestinian side in various fields.” For his part, Abbas pledged to make Palestine part of China’s One Belt and Road infrastructure project for Asia.

The previous week, Beijing had hosted the Chinese-Arab Business Forum, where the Saudi foreign minister announced that China had become the Arab world’s biggest trading partner, with trade worth $430 billion per year. Much of that trade is Chinese purchase of petroleum and LNG fossil gas from the region.

The US does not import very much petroleum from the Middle East any more, producing two-thirds of oil consumed by Americans itself through hydraulic fracturing, and importing most of the shortfall from Canada and Mexico. Hydraulic fracturing is banned in states such as New York, since it is environmentally catastrophic and leaves behind highly polluted pools of water.

Conor Mycroft at the South China Morning Post points out that while China only does $158 million annually in trade with Palestine, its trade with Israel every year amounts to $21 billion. Still, China gives aid to Palestinians and is going to build some roads on the West Bank, and many of its Middle Eastern trading partners, including Iran, no doubt pressure Beijing to offer more practical support to the Palestinians.

China’s increasing trade with the Arab world and Israel may be one of the impetuses for it to become more involved in Middle East diplomacy.

The Egyptian “Evening News” reported on Beijing’s commitments to Palestine as announced in a joint statement after the meeting between Abbas and Xi.

1. China expressed its unfaltering backing for the establishment of an independent and fully sovereign state of Palestine on the basis of 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

2. Beijing also supported the historical understandings that constitute the “status quo” agreements about the holy places of Jerusalem.

3. China supports the full membership of Palestine in the United Nations. (At the moment it is a non-member observer state, in the same category as the Vatican.)

4. China wants to see the achievement of Palestinian internal unity (i.e. ending the faction-fighting between Hamas and the PLO).

5. China supports a two-state solution through peace negotiations with Israel on the basis of “land for peace” and UN Security Council resolutions.

The Asian Exchange Union was established in 1972 and was intended to decolonize the banking system and allow member states to trade with one another without going through the old imperial powers. It never has, however, amounted to much, though it may suddenly be a bigger deal if Iran’s plans are implemented.

In the end the representatives voted to explore the formation of a non-dollar basket of currencies, to bring into being a digital currency controlled by the central banks of member states, and setting up an international banking exchange to rival the US-dominated SWIFT. The US has kicked both Iran and Russia off of SWIFT and interdicted their use of dollars, which has hurt their trade and foreign exchange reserves.

The non-dollar basket of currencies to be used as an alternative to the US dollar as a reserve currency would initially consist of the Chinese yuan, the UAE dirham and the Russian ruble, according to the plan voted on.

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank took part last year in a trial of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) using mBridge technology directed by the Bank for International Settlements and looking at the potential use of CBDC’s for “international transactions.” The study’s participants also comprised “the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Bank of Thailand, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority with participants hailing the results of the study,” according to Coingeek.

The third resolution was to set up an alternative to the SWIFT bank exchange. According to Investopedia, “The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system powers most international money and security transfers. SWIFT is a vast messaging network used by financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. ”

Mohsen Karimi, the International Vice President of Iran’s Central Bank, said at the Tehran summit, “The interbank messenger replacing SWIFT will be implemented within the next month among the members of the Asian Exchange Union.” He said that Iran has designed a new exchange that will message members of the Asian Exchange Union’s banks and allow currency transfers among them. He said this method will be cheaper than SWIFT.

For many reasons, the dollar is likely to remain the world’s reserve currency for some time, and the SWIFT banking exchange will remain central. Still, it may be possible for this rival basket of currencies to replace the dollar in Asia for some purposes, and a new banking exchange that allowed South Asian countries to deal with Iran and Russia in ways that the US cannot easily sanction would have its attractions. It is certainly the case that Washington’s over-use of financial sanctions is likely sooner or later to cause other countries to move away from the US-dominated banking exchange and from the dollar, which is a Trojan Horse for the Office of Foreign Asset Control of the US Department of the Treasury.

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony. 

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While U.S. leaders have been losing wars and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching:

De-dollarizing global trade 

For decades, the U.S. dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan. 

Illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to U.S. financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58% by 2022. 

Drawing by Jerzy Wasiukiewicz

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that U.S. sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency. 

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7’s  

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil. 

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

Movement towards “strategic autonomy” for Europe

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published. 

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side, insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.” 

The rise of progressive governments in Latin America

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for U.S. domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with U.S. demands. The entire region rejects the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, and largely doomed the gathering. 

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States. 

To reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, South America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur — South America’s major trade bloc. While U.S. influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

Peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia 

One of the false premises of U.S. foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity. 

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visited each others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011. 

At a meeting in Jordan on May 1st, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and U.S. occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate peace talks, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and other countries. 

Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to U.S. war-making

The proposal by President Lula of Brazil for a “peace club” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of U.S. and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.    

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for U.S. politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.

Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about the U.S. ability to adjust. As he recently warned, “Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

(The Conversation) – Saudi Arabia’s cabinet recently approved the decision to join the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

This could be a signal that Riyadh, with all its energy reserves, is choosing sides in the Ukraine war. Saudi Arabia, in part stung by US president Joe Biden’s refusal to deal with the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, is moving closer to Russia and China, particularly since the Chinese brokered a rapprochement between the kingdom and Iran.

The SCO began its life in 1996 as the “Shanghai Five” made up of People’s Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. In 2001 it admitted additional central Asian states and renamed itself as the SCO, a military, political and economic collaboration organisation. Since then most other central Asian states have joined, plus Mongolia as an observer and critically, in 2017, Pakistan and India.

In 2023 the SCO has nearly 50% of the global population as member states, observers or partners and approximately 30% of the global economy in nominal terms (that is pure dollar terms). It represents just over 40% in purchasing power parity (PPP), a term that measures economic power adjusted for the cost of goods in a country or group of countries.

To put that in perspective, the G7 represents a much smaller population and only about 27% of the global economy in PPP terms.

The SCO already had more economic clout than the G7 and in 2021 held its latest set of combined military exercises. And now resource rich Saudi Arabia is joining. The SCO holds frequent joint military and counter terrorism exercises with the next planned later in 2023. It will be interesting to see how Saudi engages militarily.

This edging closer to Beijing is particularly significant given that China has recently strengthened its diplomatic credibility by negotiating a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The various Iranian/Arab disputes have been one of the reasons that the Middle East and Iran have remained unstable, fragmented and unable to push a regional approach to their problems.

Part of a wider strategy

The calamitous war in Yemen is but one example. The conflict has been a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians for dominance of the region. As Saudi’s cost of oil production is lower than Iran’s, part of the Saudi strategy has been to keep oil prices artificially low, preferably below the US$65 (£52) per barrel figure that some analysts think to be the price Iran needs to balance its budget.

So, it’s not a surprise that almost immediately after the Chinese negotiated the Iran/Saudi deal Opec, the oil cartel, of which both countries are members, announced cuts in production. The resulting oil price rises that will keep inflationary pressures on the west – and the Russian economy afloat.

Many in the west think that the majority of the world is against Putin’s war in Russia and want sanctions on Russia to work. However the Economist Intelligence Unit has just published an analysis showing that support for Russia is growing in the developed world, in part driven by memories of European colonialism.

Chinese influence grows

Meanwhile, China’s president Xi Jinping is using the Ukraine war to test western resolve, use up western war stocks of munitions and assess the effectiveness of the weaponry the west gives the Ukrainians, all while moving closer to Xi’s stated aim of reunifying the mainland and the island of Taiwan.

India, as a member of the SCO and the Quad (the loose alliance of Australia, India, Japan and the US), is doing what India does best – playing both sides of the sword. Prime minister Narendra Modi, when asked recently if India is more drawn towards China’s pole of influence, or America’s, said: “We are creating a third pole.”

And while all this is going on Australia, the UK and US announced their new Aukus security partnership, with one eye on a potential conflict with China over Taiwan.

China’s expansion of the SCO and its recent exercising of its diplomatic muscle is all in support of its objective to be regarded as a world power – and to prepare its alliances for China’s stated strategic aim of reunification with Taiwan.

What it means for Taiwan

Recently Beijing reminded the world that, in 1971, UN resolution 2758 confirmed its position as the lawful government of China.

As tensions rise, the expansion of the SCO, and debate around the meaning of resolution 2758 are likely to become more important.

The day before UN resolution 2758 was passed in 1971, the recognised territory of China included both the mainland and Taiwan. It had to include both because the government of Taiwan was the internationally recognised government of all of China. Resolution 2758 changed the recognised government from Taipei to Beijing, but did not comment on the borders of the territory of China, and therefore the borders haven’t changed.

Taiwan’s constitution still claims the mainland, and still contains “transitional provisions” for elections until reunification. Reunification is a specified aim in Taiwan’s constitution. The two political parties in Taiwan have diverging opinions on integration with, or independence from, China.

China, through the SCO and other tools, is lining up its allies to back its position on Taiwan as it ramps up its rhetoric. It carried out military drills around the island on the weekend of April 8 2023, then announced it would be banning ships from entering an area north of Taiwan on April 16 due to “possible falling rocket wreckage”.

The US is firming up its core allies who could support its position on Taiwan through Nato and Aukus but is leaking support in the developing world.

The world just got a lot more complicated.

Andrew MacLeod, Visiting Professor, War and Security Studies/International Genetics, King’s College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Naturally, one of the consequences of the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia is to stimulate the latter’s search for ways to bypass the restrictions. Since the actions taken by Western countries to punish Russia for its annexation of Crimea and its first intervention in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Russia has been eagerly working to overcome the obstacles caused by Western decisions regarding its foreign trade.

It is also natural for Iran, which is also suffering from Western sanctions, especially the tough US sanctions imposed on it by Donald Trump in 2018 when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement. It is natural that Iran and Russia meet in the same endeavour.

From this perspective, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine – launched four months ago – delighted Iran’s rulers. This war, in addition to weakening Russia’s capabilities in other arenas, including the Syrian arena where there is a well-known competition for influence between Moscow and Tehran, could upset the economic relations between Russia and Iran in the interest of the latter.

This is what the Iranian-born researcher Ali Fathallah Nejad indicated in his explanation of Russia changing its position on the Vienna negotiations regarding the US re-joining the nuclear agreement with Iran.

After Moscow requested “written guarantees” from Washington that Western sanctions imposed will not affect its economic and military cooperation with Tehran, Russia announced the solution to the problem with remarkable flexibility. Fathallah Nejad noted: “Liberating Iran from the many sanctions imposed on it may help Russia bypass the heavy sanctions it is now facing.” This prompted Moscow to facilitate progress in the Vienna negotiations after blocking them, in order to make the negotiations succeed so that most of the sanctions imposed on Iran are lifted. The researcher went on to say, “It is really a great reversal of what prevailed until now, when Iran was under painful sanctions and looked to Russia for support.”

A year ago, after the Suez Canal was closed for six days as a result of a container ship blocking the waterway, the two countries met to stress the importance of accelerating the completion of the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) as an alternative to the Egyptian canal. This crossing is a project approved by Russia, India and Iran exactly 20 years ago (the agreement was signed in May 2002), and a number of Central Asian and Caucasian countries that were formerly Soviet republics participated in it.

The project aims to establish a transport route from the vast circle of the Indian Ocean, including the Gulf, and not only its Iranian part (the Sultanate of Oman was involved in the project), a road that starts from the Indian port of Mumbai by sea to the port of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran and continues overland by rail to cross Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia from its Caucasian borders to its northern European borders. The project has a second branch that travels from Iran to Russia via the Caspian Sea, and a third that passes through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia. Of course, the land route to the north of Europe through Kazakhstan is a passage that interests China as well, so that the two giants of Asia, China and India, have an alternative to the normal crossing through the Suez Canal, as well as the rest of South and East Asia.

Last week, Iran signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia to facilitate financial and commercial transactions between the two countries against the backdrop of Western sanctions imposed on them. The memorandum provided for “accelerating the North-South crossing project,” which is being prepared by means of building the necessary infrastructure for it, including ports, railways and roads. It is inevitable that the project will reduce crossing through the Suez Canal, which is one of the main sources of income for the Egyptian state, as a study prepared by the Shipping Corporation of India estimated that the crossing would save one-third of the cost of going through the Suez Canal and more than half of its duration (23 days instead of 45 to 60 currently).

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 21 June 2022

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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( GlobalVoices.org) – On May 8, 2022, the Taliban-led government of Afghanistan reported that they are investigating Islamic State (IS) rockets attack on Tajikistan from Afghanistan’s Takhar Province, as IS admitted firing eight rockets on May 7 towards “unspecified military targets in Tajikistan.” In reaction, Tajik officials cautiously mentioned bullets accidentally fired during a fight between Taliban forces and IS militants on the Afghan side of the border, yet maintained the operational readiness of its border troops. With rising tension in the region, one might conclude that the Taliban honeymoon is definitely over, as far as its Central Asian neighbors are concerned.

According to certain perceptions, the Taliban might consider Russia as being stuck in the war with Ukraine, making it the ideal moment to pressure Central Asian states into making political concessions. Tajikistan, a country that has blatantly disparaged the new Taliban government, could be a primary target. From the onset of the Taliban takeover in August 2021, the Tajik government, backed by a Russian military presence, refused to communicate with the Taliban. Dushanbe would not recognize the Taliban rule, as long as the new government continues to exclude ethnic Tajiks, who make up the quarter of the population of Afghanistan.

This pressure was in no way confined to the use of force, as verbal threats targeting its neighbors became commonplace in Afghan politics. Thus, on May 6, 2022, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former prime minister and the leader of the pro-Taliban Hezb-e Islami party, stated that Tajikistan virtually declared war on Afghanistan by providing shelter to Afghan opposition. Therefore, in retaliation, Afghanistan should provide refuge for Tajik opposition. He delivered his menacing speech in Dari, a language closely related to Tajik, following his meeting with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the acting foreign minister of the Taliban, depicting Tajikistan as weak, small, and fragile (ضعیف، کوچک، شکننده).

It is no surprise that threats and attacks targeting Tajikistan occurred amid reports of clashes in the northeastern Panjshir province between the Taliban forces and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the ethnic Tajik-dominated anti-Taliban alliance that opened a representative office in Tajikistan in October 2021. Besides, Tajikistan was the third largest host of registered Afghan refugees (after Pakistan and Iran), and is the fourth largest destination for newly arrived Afghans since 2021 (after Pakistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan).

View of Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan. Photo by UN Photo/Homayon Khoram via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Earlier, on April 18, 2022, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the affiliate of IS mainly active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, claimed that it launched a rocket assault on a military base in Uzbekistan near the city of Termez, but Uzbek officials immediately dismissed the claims in a manner similar to that of Tajikistan.

Already in January 2022, Taliban Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Mullah Omar, founder of the Taliban, urged both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to return to Afghanistan the military aircraft taken there by the US-trained pilots of the Afghan Air Force, who fled to Central Asia alongside the withdrawal of US troops in August 2021, calling on to them not test their patience and not force them to take “all possible retaliatory steps.” In light of this, on January 10, 2022, at the conference of the Russia-led military alliance Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Tajik president Emomali Rahmon warned his fellow heads of states about more than 40 training camps for terrorists located in the northwestern Afghanistan, hosting more than 6,000 militants, adding that some in Central Asia share their views.

Russia’s unlikely rapprochement with the Taliban

Indeed, from the moment of the collapse of the Afghan government following the withdrawal of US and allied troops and the rapid Taliban takeover, the three Central Asian states that border Afghanistan — Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — intended to defend their borders through security reinforcement and diplomacy, primarily relying on Russian initiatives. Within that framework, during the consultation in Moscow on July 8, 2021, Russia even seemed to succeed in obtaining a pledge from the Taliban not to violate the borders of the Central Asian states. It ought to be noted, though, that at the same meeting the Taliban assured their readiness to respect human rights, including women’s rights, but over time went on harshening policies towards women, forcing them to cover their faces, restricting work and education. Later, the Afghan diplomats representing the Taliban government received accreditation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, while the Afghan embassy in Moscow was handed over to the Taliban.

Women at the election polls in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 20, 2009. Photo by UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

As for the security reinforcement in the region upon the Taliban takeover, Russia, having a large military base in Tajikistan and involved in equipping and training Tajik border troops for decades, initially saw no need to engage the CSTO forces in protecting the border with Afghanistan, highlighting the need for military equipment and technical assistance instead. Nevertheless, in August 2021, Russia held a joint military exercise with Tajik and Uzbek troops in the Kharbmaidon training ground in Tajikistan near the Afghan border, modernizing, in the meantime, the military equipment of their base. Later, in October 2021, the CSTO carried out military drills in Tajikistan, engaging troops from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

Aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its brutish conduct of war, which is often compared to the Soviet failure in Afghanistan, made even the Taliban urge them to “desist from taking positions that could intensify violence,” shifting the strategic balance of power in the region away from Russia.

Not only would it release the Taliban from being the world’s most prominent aggressor and distract Western attention away from Afghanistan, but also it could eventually untie the Taliban from its security arrangements with Russia, which now has “no money or military force to spare” due to sanctions and military failure, and thus cannot play vital role in Taliban’s search for international recognition.

From the military perspective, Russia’s plans to rearm its military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan by the end of 2022, as well as Russia’s ambitious 2022–2024 strategic partnership program with Kazakhstan now all seem vague, as as early as a couple of weeks into the Ukraine war, Russia allegedly asked China for military and economic aid. Claims that Russia might pull some troops from its base in Armenia were made by Ukraine, while the withdrawal of troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya to reinforce its Ukrainian campaign, opened the door to strategic opportunities for small and greater powers in the region.

Amidst these developments, the Central Asian states, whose economies started suffering even before the Russo–Ukrainian war, are now threatened with the rise of violence and instability inside Afghanistan, which activated military groups, including the ISKP that carried out attacks on Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Some of these groups extensively recruit ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks and carry out media and propaganda campaigns in Central Asian languages, proclaiming “great jihad to Central Asia.” Moreover, some even consider them as Taliban attacks executed through the local affiliate of the IS, as the latter has established links with the Haqqani network, the offshoot of the Taliban.

At the moment, while Russia’s military failures in Ukraine, and its economic and political isolation has left Central Asian states alone with their fears of rising Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, news of the hours-long exchange of fire between Taliban forces and Tajik border troops from May 15, 2022, started breaking the silence that lasted only for a week. On the other hand, Russian president Vladimir Putin seems to expropriate the CSTO summit that started in Moscow on May 16, 2022, to express his grievances about the “rage of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” encouraged by the West, and threaten Finland and Sweden for their intentions to join the NATO, rather than really dealing with the Afghan threat.

Zhar Zardykhan is the Greater Central Asia Editor from Almaty, Kazakhstan. He studied Eurasian politics and Islamic history, love languages, photography, and hiking.

Via GlobalVoices.org

On February 10, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said that preparatory works for the Islamic Republic’s permanent membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is going to be done in two weeks. Upon his visit to Moscow he also said that he brought a “very important message” from Iran’s Supreme Leader Seyyed Ali Khamenei to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Leader emphasized on long-term coordination and strategic agreements with Russia. His message was of course broader, covering other issues, including economic and political ones, how to achieve agreements, future communications and policies between Iran and Russia”, said Qalibaf.

It is worth noting, however, that Qalibaf canceled his scheduled meeting with Putin after he refused to accept the health protocols to be followed during the meetings with the Russian leader. So Khamenei’s message has been delivered not to Putin directly, but to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. According to reports, Russian authorities had demanded from Ghalibaf to first self-isolate for 15 days upon arrival to the Russian capital in order to meet with Putin, which is something that the Iranian official strongly opposed.

Still, it is unlikely that Putin’s overly cautious hygiene demands will have an impact on relations between Moscow and Tehran. Iran and Russia-led EAEU have already signed a free trade agreement in October 2018, which resulted in increased Islamic Republic’s exports to the EAEU member states significantly. The Eurasian Union was created on the basis of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in 2014. Armenia and Kyrgyzstan joined the EAEU in 2015, and that is when the enlargement process stalled. Besides Iran, about 40 nations have also expressed a desire to develop trade and economic cooperation with the EAEU. However, one of the main problems for this Russia-dominated entity is the very slow progress towards its stated goals.

Iran’s potential membership in the EAEU would allow Tehran to neutralize, at least to a certain extent, the cost of the US sanctions, and also to force the US administration to be more flexible, especially when it comes to negotiations on the nuclear program. From a purely economic perspective, Iran’s access to Eurasian Union would strengthen business ties not only between Tehran and Moscow, but also between the Islamic Republic and other Russian allies. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the total turnover between Iran and the EAEU increased by two percent in 2020 and exceeded $2 billion. Food products and agricultural raw materials accounted for about 80 percent, or $939 million of the volume of supplies from the EAEU countries to Iran, more than half of which – $609 million – fell on grain. In turn, similar goods also accounted for most of the supplies from Iran to the Union – 68 percent or $575 million.

Besides joining the EAEU, Tehran could also benefit once a railway connection between Iran and Russia is established. According to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, a rail link will go through Nakhchivan – Azerbaijan’s exclave wedged between Armenia, Iran and Turkey.

“There will also be a rail link between Iran and Armenia. There will be a rail link between Turkey and Russia. Thus, all countries in the region will only benefit from this project”, said Aliyev discussing the Nakhchivan corridor scheme.

According to Vardan Voskanyan, Head of the Department of Iranian Studies at Yerevan State University, both Russia and Iran are interested in promoting this project. He says that in the past, the absence of good land transportation between Russia and Armenia negatively affected bilateral trade relations between the two allied countries.

For Russia, this road could serve as an alternative pathway to the markets of the Middle East, and Armenia could finally get a land link to the market of the Eurasian Union. One thing is for sure – the Nakhchivan corridor will negatively affect Western-backed Georgia which has for years benefited as an important regional transit country.

Both Russia and Iran could come out of these infrastructural improvements with a much strengthened hand in geopolitics. Once completed, the Nakhchivan corridor will provide Turkey the opportunity to have a direct railway route to Baku, which will strengthen Ankara’s influence in energy-rich Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea region. Compared to the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which connects Azerbaijan to Turkey through Georgia, the road within the new corridor will be about 340 kilometers (211 miles) shorter. Russia, on the other hand, will get a railway link with Turkey and Iran, which has great potential primarily in light of the announced strengthening of trade and economic ties between Moscow and Tehran. Moreover, the Russian Federation will have an additional land link to its ally Armenia through Azerbaijan – a country that will play the role of a transport hub.

If Iran can join the burgeoning Eurasian economy, it may drastically weaken Biden’s hand and reduce pressure on Iran to deal with Washington.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

New China TV: “Iran, Russia to hold joint naval exercise in Indian Ocean: military official”

The choice of Iran was deliberate. The Trump administration has threatened the most severe sanctions imaginable against any country that cooperates militarily with Iran or sells it arms.

While no one is saying so openly, Trump is crazy enough to deploy the US Navy against Russian vessels in the Gulf suspected of supplying arms to Iran. The Russo-Iranian military drills were in part about how to respond to such a US attack.

Maxime Popov at AFP reports,

“According to the defence ministry, up to 250 tanks and around 450 infantry combat vehicles and armoured personnel carriers are taking part in the drills along with artillery systems and rocket launchers. The Russian forces will test the TOS-2 heavy flamethrower systems . . .”

Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced that the Iranian navy took part, providing cover to the landing of Russian infantry on the coast of Russia’s Daghestan province in the Caucasus:

“Two ships of the Iranian Navy provided support to Russian marines during the training of an episode of landing troops on the unequipped coast near Zelenomorsk in Dagestan at the maneuvers “Kavkaz”.

“A detachment of warships of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Navy consisting of the “Joshan” and “Paykan” missile boats together with the “Tatarstan”, “Astrakhan” and “Ustyug” missile ships provided cover for the tactical amphibious forces,” said Rear Admiral Nikolai Yakubovsky, chief of staff of the Caspian flotilla.

According to the scenario of the exercise, the ship group of the Caspian flotilla of the Russian Navy and a detachment of warships of the Iranian Navy defeated the ships of the mock enemy. “Tatarstan”, “Ustyug”, “Astrakhan”, “Joshan” and “Paykan” at the same time performed live artillery firing at surface targets.

As part of the maneuvers “Kavkaz-2020″, a joint Russian-Iranian ship group will also perform tasks to protect sea communications and counteract mock terrorists in the Caspian sea.”

As for cooperating with Iran, the United Nations Security Council had initiated an arms embargo on Iran in 2007, but those sanctions will be lifted on October 18 as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, signed by all the permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany.

Trump breached the treaty in May, 2018, and now insists that it is null and void for all the countries of the world. The UN Security Council and its constituent nations beg to differ.

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif flew to Moscow yesterday for consultations with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. The latter said of the Trump threats of heavy sanctions for arms deals with Iran, according to Interax,

“Russia will by no means base its policy on taking into account these aggressive, illegal demands, which have no legal force. I hope that other countries, which cooperate with Iran, will also take a principled stance and be guided by their national interests rather than the need to obey the diktat from across the ocean.”

He pledged bilateral cooperation with Iran even so, according to Tass, and said, “To our great regret, tensions are being raised around the JCPOA . . . Our American colleagues are trying to promote illegal and unacceptable unilateral ideas that the UN Security Council does not support.”

Zarif for his part underlined the historic closeness of Moscow and Tehran, according to Farsnews: “Relations between the two countries are being pursued with great seriousness under the direct supervision of their Presidents. I can boldly say that in the history of relations between the two countries, there has never been such serious, close and strategic relationship.”

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Bonus Video:

South China Morning Post: “Russia kicks off Kavkaz 2020 military exercises with China, Iran, Belarus and others”

As Iran’s IRNA news service reports today, the answer was a resounding “Yes!”

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution presented by US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, aimed at an indefinite extension of the UN arms embargo on Iran. Only one of the 15 members, the Dominican Republic, supported the US resolution. Eleven abstained. And two–Russia and China, voted against it. The resolution would have needed 8 to pass and would have needed to avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members.

But it failed by 13 to 2. China and Russia did not even have to brandish a veto. It is hard to remember another vote on which the US was humiliated quite this badly, though if George W. Bush had actually pursued a UNSC authorization for his Iraq War in spring of 2003, he might have similarly gone down to epochal diplomatic defeat.

Let us underline this. The most powerful countries in the world and the current representatives of the main global blocs just sided with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against Donald J. Trump.

The United States is no longer the leader of the free world.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed between that country and the five permanent members of the UNSC stipulated that the arms embargo would lapse on October 18, 2020. The Trump administration, along with allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, wanted to avert the end of the ban on selling weapons to Iran.

The UN Security Council has five permanent members– Russia, China, France, the UK and the US. It has another ten rotating members. Right now they are Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Germany, Indonesia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Tunisia, and Viet Nam. I was a little surprised that South Africa and Viet Nam did not outright vote against, though I suppose they thought abstention made their point well enough and was less likely to anger the mercurial Trump. The US only finally lifted a longstanding arms embargo on Viet Nam a few years ago.

One of the functions of the secretary of state of the United States is to politick with other countries in such a way as to ensure the US gets its way. When that isn’t possible, at the very least a public humiliation should be avoided. SecState Mike Pompeo accomplished neither one. He was so inept and so huge a failure at this diplomatic demarche that the US language went down to crushing defeat.

It was obvious to me that this would happen a week ago.

Just on Thursday, Russia’s Tass reported That Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, had tweeted out that the extension of an arms embargo against Iran is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which provides for a resumption of the supply of arms and military equipment to Iran in the wake of the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had already made it clear in June that this was the Russian position.

Embed from Getty Images
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (not seen) after a meeting in Moscow, Russia on August 11, 2020. (Photo by Russian Foreign Ministry / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images).

Russia and China clearly see Iran as a market for their arms industries, and won’t let Washington get in the way.

IRNA quoted the new Belgian ambassador to the UN, Philippe Kridelka, as saying that his country abstained on the US initiative because Brussels strongly believes that Iran’s nuclear program must remain within the framework of the JCPOA.

Belgium, Germany, Britain and France all abstained on these grounds. They are afraid that if the arms embargo is kept in place, in contravention of the 2015 nuclear accord, Iran will simply withdraw from it, as Trump already has, and will then be free to pursue any nuclear ambitions it has, unconstrained by inspections or the other severe restraints of the JCPOA.

Pompeo is now threatening to try to invoke a provision of the Iran nuclear deal that allows signatories to it to erase the gains Iran made in that treaty on the grounds that Iran has not strictly observed the provisions of the treaty.

Iran was in fact in complete compliance until May, 2018, when Trump breached the treaty and placed the most severe sanctions on Iran ever placed on any country by another in peace time. Since then Tehran has departed from compliance in minor ways, so as to put pressure on Europe to defy Trump’s third-party economic sanctions, which have had the effect of devastating Iran’s trade. Europe has not in fact defied Trump. Since Iran gave up 80% of its nuclear program to get sanctions relief, and has instead seen sanctions turbocharged, Tehran understandably feels betrayed.

The rest of the UNSC thinks Pompeo’s idea is crazy, that he can trigger the snap back provision even though the US pulled out of the treaty, telling CNN, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

Some observers are so puzzled by the Trump administration’s Himalayan ineptitude that they expressed suspicions that it was trying to fail at the UNSC for some nefarious purpose. Me, I think ineptitude is the better explanation.

If a US snap back resolution is sent to the UNSC, it will receive a humiliating response, just as happened on Friday. And that will be more ineptitude, not signs of grand strategy.

Some fear that Trump will then try to sanction countries that sell arms to Iran, using its status as the world’s sole superpower to overrule the UNSC and so irreparably damaging its effectiveness, beginning a process of destroying the United Nations Organization.

China has already made it clear that it will adopt Iran as its next big economic project, regardless of what Washington wants, and China’s gross domestic product by purchasing power parity now rivals that of the US (since it is handing the coronavirus recession much better than Trump, its relative economic strength over the US could grow the rest of this year).

So I think it is more likely that Trump will dull the US sanctions blade than that he will be able to use it to decapitate the United Nations.

Featured Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping, File, h/t kremlin.ru.