Chinese think tank official: change the terms of the Iran debate

China can be less “hurried” on the Iran nuclear question, a scholar with a key PRC think tank wrote last week.  Writing in an op-ed for the Party mouthpiece Global Times, Gao Zugui argued for calm in the face of Western pressure over Iranian sanctions and to “be less rushed, more independent, less tied-up.” This bit of guidance from the director of the World Politics Research Institute at the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, while puzzling, actually suggests important elements of Chinese strategy in managing international pressure over Iran.

The gist of Gao’s piece is that China can effectively demur on Iran by objecting to the terms and stakes of the Iran debate as set by the West. The narrative of the Iranian impasse currently peddled by Western officials posits that only China, with its key vote on sanctions, can prevent military conflict. “In reality, events need not develop in this straight line,” Gao counters, offering that promising diplomatic solutions have yet to be exhausted.

Moreover, Gao writes, China ought to resist the West’s “binding together” all sorts of “important relationships and problems” within the debate, a tactic meant to constrain China’s choices over Iran. Chinese diplomats need to forcefully argue that Sino-U.S. relations should not be so closely dependent on what China does with regard to Iran, or that it is possible for Beijing to generally support Iran without aiding its development of nuclear weapons, something China opposes.  In a nutshell, Gao is exhorting China’s foreign policy community to actively re-frame the debate on Iran to better reflect China’s stance.

Gao Zugui’s article is interesting because its very structure ironically echoes its central message about tactics.  The first half of the piece carefully considers the West’s scheme of isolating China diplomatically on Iran. But the second half more or less abandons discussion of that strategy or the West’s core concerns on Iran, and goes off instead on a seemingly disingenuous critique of the West for not being sufficiently appreciative of China’s ‘nuanced’ (read: untenable) position on Iran.  The concluding paragraph, an assertion of China’s right to weigh “all considerations” in deciding upon its Iran policies, reminds that this diversionary strategy also affords China the rhetorical cover to proceed in the Persian Gulf on its own terms.

This appeal conspicuously avoids addressing Western concerns over Iran’s nuclear intentions, or the impact of China’s material support to Iran, but that may be the point.  Gao’s commentary can be read as further evidence that Beijing’s modus operandi on Iran will be to obfuscate, stall, and perhaps politely frustrate the West’s mission to rein in Iran.