Em sincronia o núcleo estratégico da Eurásia: Iran já integra Rússia e China em economia e em defesa.
For Iran, all this will happen in parallel with European energy giants investing in liquefied natural gas (LNG) development and technology. Investing in multiple fronts, China will also be instrumental in its push to finally help complete the much-troubled Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline, which in the future may even include an extension to Xinjiang. Xi does Tehran : The icing in this vast energy cake is how both Russia and China are deeply committed to integrating Iran into their Eurasian vision. Iran may finally be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summer summit in Russia. That implies a full-fledged security/commercial/political partnership involving Russia, China, Iran, and most Central Asian’stans.’ Iran is already a founding member of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); that means financing for an array of New Silk Road-related projects bound to benefit the Iranian economy.
AIIB funding will certainly merge with loans and other assistance for infrastructure development related to the Chinese-established Silk Road Fund. And last but not least, the China-Iran strategic partnership will be discussed in detail as Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Tehran next month. It’s easy to remember how Iran was relentlessly derided as “isolated” by the exceptionalist crowd only a few months ago. Yet the fact is it was never isolated, but painstakingly building blocks towards Eurasian integration. European firms are, of course, itching to unleash an avalanche of investment in the Iranian market post-sanctions, and most of all the energy giants badly yearn to lessen EU’s dependency on Gazprom. But they’ll be facing formidable competition, as it was up to Moscow and Beijing to identify, a long time ago, which way the wind was blowing: the inevitable (re)emergence of Iran as a key Eurasian power.
