TEHRAN – An Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) says during the nuclear talks between Iran and the major powers both Russia and China realized that the endgame would be a rapprochement between Iran and the West therefore it is in the interest of both countries to bring “Iran closer to their orbit via a full membership” in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Ali Fathollah-Nejad says Iran can benefit from membership in the SCO “both economically and politically” but now “it is too early to predict concrete benefits.”

Fathollah-Nejad, who is also a research associate at the Centre of International Cooperation and Development Research (CECID) of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), is of the opinion that in the 21st-century one cannot substitute one geopolitical orientation with another.

“In an increasingly multipolar world order one has to look to all directions: West and East as well as North and South,” Fathollah-Nejad tells the Tehran Times in an exclusive interview

Following is the full text of the interview:

Q: First Russia opposed membership of Iran in the SCO. However, Russia has changed position and backs Iran’s entry into the bloc. What is the reason for this policy shift?

The more tensions rise between China and Russia on the one hand and the West or NATO on the other, the process of Iran becoming a full SCO member will be accelerated.
A: Indeed, over the past decade, Moscow has pursued a biased policy in this regard. In the wake of the 2010 UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution tightening sanctions on Iran, Russia stated that there was an SCO rule not allowing membership to states placed under UNSC resolutions. This stance came as a surprise, since it was Russia itself who as a permanent UNSC member had voted in favour of the same resolutions that it now evoked to block the upgrading of Iran’s SCO membership from an observer into a permanent one.

Recently, there seems to be a new tendency of Russia more openly, yet cautiously, voicing support for Iran to become a full SCO member. This has, in my view, two reasons. One, as you have indicated, one of the prominent goals of the SCO has been to provide a counterbalance to a Western-dominated global order. Yet, despite the obvious advantages to fully integrate Iran into the SCO in order to increase the latter’s strategic and political weight vis-à-vis the West, in the past Russia has refrained from making it a reality. Now that we witnessed a stark falling-out between Russia and the West in the wake of the crisis over Ukraine – which, inter alia, saw Moscow being expelled from the formerly G8 (now G7) in March 2014 –, there is new rationale emerging. Add to that, the other key SCO actor China being confronted with Washington’s “pivot to Asia” policy, basically a euphemism for a policy of containment against Chinese influence over the Asia Pacific region. This Western-driven geopolitical alienation of both Moscow and Beijing in recent years has quite predictably paved the way for a closer relationship being forged between the two. Among others, this can be exemplified by Russia and China’s current plan to combine their respective regional economic projects, namely the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt, which beyond its mutual commercial advantages in reducing the cost of intra-Eurasian and Asian–European trade has also a geopolitical dimension.

Two, the process of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 over the last one and a half months, during which also these two Eurasian great-powers have been sitting at the table, made clear to them that the endgame would be a rapprochement between the West and Iran. Against this backdrop, it is in the interest of both Russia and China to counterbalance this prospect by bringing Iran closer to their orbit via a full membership in the SCO, an organization that is clearly dominated by them.

Therefore, these two trends on the global geopolitical chessboard have certainly impacted upon Russia’s latest calculation regarding Iranian SCO membership. In other words, the more tensions rise between China and Russia on the one hand and the West or NATO on the other, the process of Iran becoming a full SCO member will be accelerated. Formally, once UNSC sanctions will be lifted following the deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, the path for Iranian full membership in the SCO will be opened. Yet, the final decisions towards upgrading Iran’s SCO status will be geopolitical along the lines outlined. Although we might have an idea of future geopolitical developments, there can be no certainty on the actual future of Iran–West and Russia–West relations that are central to the above equation regarding Iran’s SCO status.

Now, the foreign-policy school of thought dominant in the current administration (of Iran) has a very different reading of the distribution of power in the international system Q: Some believe that Iran’s main security concerns are bound to the Middle East and not the ‘East’ and based on this assumption they do not see a membership of Iran in the SCO as a priority. What is your view?

A: There can be no doubt that Iran’s national security is foremost bound to its immediate neighbourhood. But, in short, in the era of globalization, national security cannot be detached from economic well-being as the lack of the latter can have far-reaching consequences for both domestic stability as well as capacities for conducting foreign policy. In that regard, Iran cannot afford to ignore “its East”, not least because Asia has turned into the globe’s economic centre of gravity.

Q: What would be the advantages of a possible Iran’s membership in the organization?

A: There is no doubt that Iranian membership in the SCO harbours many potentialities. Now with India and Pakistan having been accepted as new SCO full members, the organization has undoubtedly become the premier intra-state forum across the large Eurasian continent as well as one to be increasingly reckoned with globally. In that regard, Iran can benefit from that on various grounds, both economically and politically. However, it is too early to predict concrete benefits.

In any case, there should be no illusion that China and Russia will remain the dominant players within the SCO, largely deciding upon its future direction. In that process, their respective national interests will continue to assume primacy.

Q: Some say Iran should now replace ‘look to the East’ with ‘look to the West’ to reap more benefits. What do you think?

A: As is the case with all countries, Iran also harbours various foreign-policy schools of thought. The one dominant during the previous administration had advocated a “look to the East” policy. Yet, this outlook did not emerge from a vacuum but was a consequence of the sense of alienation Iran felt towards the West in the wake of the failure of the initial phase of the nuclear negotiations with the EU-3 when the latter adopted the U.S. line of “zero enrichment”. Coupled with the belief that U.S. power would experience rapid decline and that the world order had already been marked by a fully-fledged multipolar system – both assumptions arguably misleading –, Iran by the mid-2000s adopted the “look to the East” policy. It was also in 2005 when Iran became on observer state in the SCO. However, the “look to the East” turned out to be quite a futile exercise, as contrary to Tehran’s expectations an “Eastern balancing” against Western pressure was not achieved. The major reason was that Russia, China and India’s ties with Iran to a significant degree were a function of their respective relationship with the U.S.

Now, the foreign-policy school of thought dominant in the current administration has a very different reading of the distribution of power in the international system. It rightly sees that system still being largely dominated by Western powers. In fact, a prime example of U.S. unilateral power has been Washington’s ability to weave the massive sanctions regime against Iran since 2004. However, the problem with this school remains with its rosy depiction of the globalization process that largely buys into the neoliberal concept of a trickle-down effect largely unfit to bring about sustainable development, thereby ignoring the many lessons that countries from the Global South comparable to Iran have had to make during the past decades. Here, a more critical, hence realistic reading of globalization is an utmost necessity if Iran’s socio-economic challenges are to be meaningfully addressed.

In the end, however, in the 21st-century one cannot substitute one geopolitical orientation with another. Rather than alliances à la Cold War bipolarity, today states must seek multi-alignments. In that vein, in an increasingly multipolar world order one has to look to all directions: West and East as well as North and South.