China and Iran signed 25-year secret cooperation pact

Iran and China on Saturday signed a 25-year cooperation agreement in Tehran, which began to take shape in 2016. This “25-year strategic cooperation agreement,” as Iranian state television called it and the details of which have not been made public, It was signed by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on a visit to Tehran.

The pact, which was first proposed in January 2016, is part of the Initiative of the Belt and Road, a plan to finance infrastructure projects and increase their influence abroad that has been a flagship project of the Chinese regime of Xi Jinping.

“The relations between Iran and China are deep and of different dimensions and this requires that they be included in a document”, underlined the Iranian spokesperson for Foreign Affairs.Jatibzadehen said in an interview with Iranian state television, in which he explained that the text of the agreement had been exchanged between the two states “on several occasions”.

Jatibzadeh indicated that the main axis of this global roadmap is the economic dimension and Iran’s participation in the Chinese initiative to create a new silk road, known under the slogan “one band, one road”.

The pact states, according to what has been published by some official Persian media, that China is investing around $ 400 billion in Iran’s energy and infrastructure sectors over a 25-year period. In return, Tehran, a major producer of hydrocarbons, will guarantee a stable supply of oil and gas at competitive prices to Chinese industry.

This roadmap for bringing bilateral relations to “a global and strategic level” began to be forged with the visit in January 2016 of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran. It was the first visit by a foreign head of state to Iran since the entry into force of the nuclear deal that month, which was signed in July 2015 between Tehran and six major powers, including the China.

This nuclear pact, which Beijing continues to defend, has been considerably weakened since the unilateral withdrawal of the United States in 2018, which imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran. The energy sector was also sanctioned by Washington, which assured that the objective was to “reduce to zero” Iranian oil exports, vital to the economy of the Islamic Republic.

China was a major customer for Iranian crude, and although it continued to buy from Iran through various methods to circumvent US sanctions, exports have suffered significantly in recent years.

Privacy scandal

In July last year, controversy erupted over the deal when former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced that it was being negotiated “without the knowledge of the Iranian people”. At the time, the foreign minister was booed in parliament when he assured lawmakers that there was “nothing secret” about the proposed deal, and promised everything would be public.

However, the government has yet to keep that promise and very few details have been released.

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