For decades, Iran was firmly within the US ambit, but then came the revolution. The Shah, whose family had ruled for over half a century, fled abroad. And following a failed attempt at parliamentary democracy, the Iran Revolutionary Guards led by their cleric masters took over.
While there are elections now and an elected government, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sets the broad outlines of domestic and foreign policy. He also controls the judiciary and is head of the armed forces.
At present, Iran is further strengthening its ties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) through its observer status with a view presumably to eventual full membership. The SCO embraces almost all of Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lanka. It is a vast bloc including the two largest developing economies in the world.
Japan and Taiwan have already expressed their trepidations at China exercising muscle along its littoral regions and the coastal islands down to the Philippines. Their principal concern is for the shipping lanes up which tankers bring fossil fuels to them from the Middle East.
There appears to be no concerted US policy to deal with these issues other than random acts of petulance. Thus the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines exposed by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. It thwarted Germany’s desire for cheap Russian gas transported under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. The result was a point or two drop in German GDP as it scurried to buy liquefied gas from the global market including the US.
If earlier, it had acquired half of its gas from Russia and a third of its oil,the invasion of Ukraine accelerated a move away from Russia. However, everyone is quite aware that when the Ukraine problem dies down, the gas and oil will still be in Russia as will Europe’s hunger for them and the added attraction of low prices. The multiplicity of routes including one via Turkey just across the Black Sea — more than one way to skin a cat as that awful expression goes — add to the temptations.
After all that has happened, is it any wonder Putin gave up on an impotent Europe and went east. So it is that China’s ravenous demand for energy in a fast-growing economy is to be supplied by its neighbor Russia.
China is also constructing roads (the Belt and Road Initiative) along Pakistan’s spine to its newly built (by China) port of Gwadar. It provides a direct road link from China. Of course, Pakistan is an old trusted friend and now dependent ally.
From Gwadar, the Gulf and the Gulf States are a stone’s throw away, and Africa just a hop, skip and a jump. China has been investing in Africa for quite some time and its entrepreneurs have been independently starting businesses there. Now travel just became that much easier — just a two to three day drive instead of the circuitous route across the Indian Ocean and up the Pacific coast.
Who wins? Who loses? It should not be difficult to discern.