Iran conflict

The so-called P5+1 nations (UN Security Council permanent members the US, Russia, China, Britain and France together with Germany) are set to meet later this week to discuss Iran's failure to agree to a solution that would assuage concerns about Tehran's nuclear program.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that the six powers would convene in New York, probably on Saturday, to debate "the kind and degree of sanctions we should be exploring."

The meeting has been called after Tehran did not meet a deadline set by the US at the end of 2009 to accept a deal that would have seen uranium being taken out of Iran and returned as enriched fuel rods needed in the production of nuclear energy.

Despite denials from the Iranian government, the US suspects Tehran of trying to build nuclear weapons. Washington would like to see sanctions imposed to force Iran to comply with desires for transparency.

But chances of any progress toward such punitive measures are slim. China, in particular, does not see eye to eye with the US on the potential threat posed by Iran.

"China does not share the international community's dramatic interpretation of Iran's nuclear program that has Iran building a nuclear bomb," the former director of the GIGA Institute for Near Eastern Studies, Udo Steinbach, told Deutsche Welle.

The Chinese leadership is also no great believer in sanctions in general.

"China is traditionally very hesitant in this regard," the director of the China program at the German Society for Foreign Policy, Eberhard Sandschneider, told Deutsche Welle. "They believe much more in a negotiated settlement."

And indeed the question of sanctions is not the only issue on which Beijing is closer to Tehran than to Washington.

Non-democratic sympathies

Early in 2010 a host of conservative blogs began publishing reports that China had sold anti-riot military vehicles, equipped with water cannons, to the Iranian government for use against pro-democracy demonstrators.

The Chinese firm, Dalian Eagle-Sky Co., accused of providing the vehicles vehemently denies the accusation.

"This is absolutely not true, and we don't know where these stories come from," a company spokesman, who declined to be named, told Deutsche Welle. "We have never exported any of the vehicles in question anywhere in the world. We specialize in military field kitchens."

But even if such rumors are false, it would be hardly realistic to expect Beijing to take Tehran to task for putting down pro-democracy protesters.

"We can reasonably assume the Chinese leadership supports the measures taken by the Iranian government against the demonstrators," Steinbach said.

Indeed, the popular protests in Iran that arose last year after the controversial reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably remind Chinese leaders of the pro-democracy demonstrations in China in 1990, which Beijing suppressed with military force.

"The two situations aren't directly comparable, but Beijing views the unrest in Iran with concern and is on the side of the Iranian government," Sandschneider said. "That's also because they fear the pro-democracy protest there could spark something similar in their own country, particularly on the Internet."

Chinese new media activists associated with the initiative "China4Iran" have expressed their support for the demonstrators in Iran - as well as hopes that an equivalent movement could start in China.

Nukes for oil?

In contrast to the US, Bejing does not see Iran as a country hostile to itself and its allies. Thus, the Chinese leadership is not primarily concerned with whether Tehran gets a nuclear bomb.

On the contrary, as the world's most populous country and one of the globe's fastest growing economies, China has other things on its mind when it comes to Iran.

Iran is China's third-largest supplier of crude oil, according to the Beijing-based General Administration of Customs. Iran also supplies the Asian giant with significant quantities of natural gas.

"China is interested in containing the conflict between Iran and the West, but trade and oil are perhaps their primary interests," Sandschneider said.

China is also one of the leading exporters of products to Iran, and the relationship between the two countries has rapidly been growing closer in recent years.

"We mutually complement each other," Ali Akbar Salehi - Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency - said in a 2004 interview with The Washington Post. "They have industry and we have energy resources."

So the US is unlikely to make much headway at this weekend's meeting.

"The Chinese government has made clear it doesn't see much sense to pursue further sanctions," Sandschneider told Deutsche Welle. "So we can't expect any immediate results."

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Mudge