Senior diplomats from China, Iran, and Russia held a meeting on Iran’s nuclear development in Beijing on March 14, calling for the West to lift all sanctions on Iran.
Analysts said the talks in Beijing are the three countries’ strategic move to challenge and pressure the Western democratic world led by the United States.
The meeting was hosted by Ma Zhaoxu, the Chinese regime’s executive vice minister of foreign affairs. He was joined by Ryabkov Sergey Alexeevich, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, and Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister.
In a joint statement after the meeting, the three states called for “terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions” on Iran.
They also called for a restart to multinational talks on Iran’s nuclear issue.
“The three countries reiterated that political and diplomatic engagement and dialogue based on the principle of mutual respect remains the only viable and practical option in this regard,” the statement reads.
Wang Yi, the Chinese regime’s foreign minister, also attended the meeting. Without naming the United States, he urged “other parties involved … to demonstrate political sincerity and return to talks at an early date.”
Iran’s rapid development of a nuclear program has drawn warnings from Israel and the United States, as it would intensify the conflict in the Middle East and pose a major threat to the peace in the region.
U.S. President Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign in February, aimed at “denying Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon, and countering Iran’s malign influence abroad.”
Trump said he still believes a new deal can be reached.
The joint statement with Russia and Iran shows that the Chinese regime “is no longer low-key, but is actively challenging U.S. influence in the Middle East and the global order,” Sun Kuo-hsiang, professor of international affairs and business at Nanhua University in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times. The meeting in Beijing is a strategic means of public pressure on the United States, he said.
The fact that the three countries met in China indicates that they are jointly challenging the rules-based international order led by the United States, Sun said.
“China seeks dominance and discourse power in international issues,“ he said. ”It highlights the formation of a multipolar international structure, and increases diplomatic and strategic pressure on the United States.”
Meanwhile, China is feeling the pressure from the trade war with the United States.
The key issue of the nuclear talks is whether Iran’s nuclear weapon development will continue, Shen Ming-shih, director of the division of national security research at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times.
“Iran has already reached nearly 90 percent of its uranium enrichment, and it will be able to produce nuclear weapons very soon,“ Shen said. ”This is unbearable for the United States or Israel.”
According to Shen, the key is not whether the United States will join the multinational talks, but whether “Iran can guarantee that it will not develop nuclear weapons, or open these nuclear facilities to the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency, or to the outside world for inspection or supervision to ensure safety.”
The worst-case scenario for the United States and Israel is that “Iran secretly develops nuclear weapons,” Shen told The Epoch Times.
“If it succeeds, it may have a great impact on the security of the entire Middle East,” he said. “This is also the biggest variable to the security of the Middle East after the conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
The probability of the United States lifting sanctions in the short term is “extremely low,” Sun said.
“The United States believes that Iran has not shown enough sincerity to restart the nuclear agreement,“ he said. ”Although nuclear negotiations may be restarted, the situation is complicated and not optimistic.”
Joint Pressure on the US
When Beijing announced the trilateral talks on March 12, China, Iran, and Russia held joint naval exercises in the Middle East on the same day.
China continues to buy crude oil from Iran despite Western sanctions, while Russia relies on Iran to provide bomb-carrying drones and other weaponry in its war with Ukraine.
The nuclear meeting in Beijing was a way for the three nations to put pressure on the United States, according to Shen.
“The Chinese regime and Russia are very reluctant to face the United States alone,“ he said. ”Now, regarding the problem [of Iran’s nuclear weapon development] that is troubling the United States, they take the same stance to put pressure on the United States. … being anti-American or putting the United States in trouble is in the common interests of China and Russia, which is why the United States wants to divide China and Russia.”