Op-Ed Contributors

Dealing with Iran's nuke issue

By Hua Liming (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-14 07:52

China and other key world powers, except the US, have keen national interests at stake as far as Teheran is concerned

The United States has been drumming up efforts for a fresh round of UN sanctions against Iran, with its European allies Britain, France and Germany standing steadfast, and China and Russia wavering on the issue.

The five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany have formed a key multilateral mechanism (P5 plus one) that can determine the fate of Iran's dispute with the international community over its nuclear program.

Any kind of sanctions, or war, will likely entail risks for China, which has increasingly depended on the outside world for its economic development.

A war by the US or Israel against Teheran, which is likely to set the oil-rich Gulf ablaze, will cut down world energy supplies by 60 percent, fuel a rise in oil prices and plunge the global economy into a fresh crisis.

Given that a fast-growing China has become increasingly dependent on world energy supplies, it is thus in Beijing's strategic interests to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

It is China's top diplomatic priority to ease confrontation and defuse conflicts in a bid to prevent tensions over Iran's nuclear issue from escalating into a military confrontation.

That can explain why China has remained cautious on the issue and made unremitting efforts to push for its settlement in a peaceful and diplomatic manner.

Any new sanctions on Iran will escalate the conflict and may likely lead to war.

With the US still bogged down by its two battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the global economy struggling to rise from the financial crisis, there is no reason for the whole world to pay the bill again for a third US war in the Middle East region.

All major world powers except the US have huge strategic, energy related and economic interests in Iran.

Iran serves as Russia's buffer in the south given that an independent and US-antagonistic Iran is in Moscow's interest in the context of the US-led eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Russia's security in its mostly Muslim-populated Caucasus region and Chechnya is closely related with Iran. Moscow has also benefited from its cooperation with Iran on nuclear power construction and its export of airplanes, missiles and other sophisticated weapons to Teheran.

In addition, a $630 million-worth Russian investment in Iran's South Pars gas field will also suffer in case new UN sanctions come into force.

The EU too cannot ignore Iran's economic and strategic importance to itself. Some 80 percent of the bloc's oil consumption depends on the Gulf.

Since 1992, Germany, France, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands have successively joined in to exploit Iran's oil and gas fields.

Iran remains the EU's sixth largest energy supplier, with energy imports taking up 80 percent of the bloc's total import volume from the oil-abundant Gulf nation.