Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

While US Claims to Push China on Iran Sanctions, Oil Calls the Tune, GIT Prof Says Chinese Army Wants a Nuclear Iran

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 27, updated -- During Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked to the press about China's compliance with US sanctions on Iran.

  She said that “there are some entities within China that we have brought to the attention of the Chinese leadership that are still not as, shall we say, as in compliance as we would like them to be.”

   But how hard is the US actually pushing? On January 27 Inner City Press asked China expert -- and resident -- Professor John W. Garver of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs of Georgia Institute of Technology about China's compliance.

  Garver said that while China has an economic interest for now in being seen as respecting US unilateral sanctions, China's oil and historical relations with Iran make compliance unlikely.

  “China has decided it will cooperate with the international community,” he told Inner City Press, “but it won't give the US all that it wants.”

  Garver pointed out that even under the Shah, China had close relations with Iran, to “stop what was then called Soviet expansionism.” More recently, he said, China has tried so far without success to link the US cutting back support to Taiwan with it voluntarily complying with the US unilateral sanctions on Iran.

Inner City Press asked Garver to compare China's approach to Iran to its evolving Sudanese foreign policy. Garver called Iran much more important to China, given its greater economic development.

  “From a Chinese perspective,” he said, “Iran is simply a far more important country than Sudan, or Angola, with what the Chinese call comprehensive national power.” He acknowledged that for now, Angola is the number one supplier of oil to China.

Hillary Clinton & Hu, previously, US Iran sanctions not shown

   He analogized China's relations with Iran with its support of Pakistan, neither of which he predicted China will abandon. “It's not going to cut Iran loose, because Iran is too important.” By standing with Iran during its “hour of need,” he said, China “builds capital in Tehran as a country that is willing to pursue an independent line... despite American outrage.”

   Given China's relative silence compared to Russia in the UN Security Council on the stand off in Cote d'Ivoire, Inner City Press asked Garver about China's position on Angola ally Laurent Gbabgo. Garver said he had not prepared for that question. The call was sponsored by Realite-EU, with an announced focus on Iran.

   Garver opined that there are “hard realists” in the Chinese military who favor Iran getting nuclear weapons. He listed two reasons for this. First, if oil producing Iran is able to “stand up” to the United States, it makes it a multi-polar world.

  Second, if the US is caught up in fights with Iran, it is less able to be a player in the “Western Pacific,” where China's most immediate interests lie.

  Garver said that Hu and his successor have to take this hard realist view and the military into account. Follow up is pending. Watch this site.