China, Iran and Russia v the West

Just how close will they become?

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia’s president, and Ebrahim Raisi, his Iranian counterpart, have several things in common. Both belong to a tiny group of leaders personally targeted by American sanctions. Even though neither travels much, both have been to China in recent years. And both seem increasingly fond of one another. In December they met in the Kremlin to discuss the war in Gaza. On March 18th Mr Raisi was quick to congratulate Mr Putin on his “decisive” election victory.

For much of history, Russia, Iran and China were less chummy. Imperialists at heart, they often meddled in one another’s neighbourhoods and jostled for control of Asia’s trade routes. Lately, however, America has changed the dynamic. In 2020, two years after exiting a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme, it reimposed a trade embargo on the country; more penalties were announced in January, to punish Iran for backing Hamas and Houthi rebels. Russia fell under Western sanctions in 2022, after invading Ukraine, which were recently tightened. Meanwhile, China faces restrictions of its own, which could become much more stringent if Donald Trump is elected president in November. United by a common foe, the trio now vow to advance a common foreign policy: support for a multipolar world no longer dominated by America. All see stronger economic ties as the basis for their alliance.

China has promised a “no limits” partnership with Russia, and signed a 25-year

“strategic agreement” with Iran in 2021. All three countries are members of the same multilateral clubs, such as the BRICS. Bilateral trade is growing; plans are being drawn up for tariff-free blocs, new payment systems and trade routes that bypass Western-controlled places. For America and its allies, this is the stuff of nightmares. A thriving anti-Western axis could dodge sanctions, win wars and recruit other malign actors. The entente involves areas where links are already strong, others where collaboration is only partial and some unresolved questions. What might the alliance look like in five to ten years?

Start with booming business. China has long been a big customer of petrostates, including Iran and Russia. But these two also used to sell lots of oil to Europe, which was close to Russia’s fields and easy to reach from the Gulf. Since Europe started snubbing them, China has been buying barrels at bargain prices. Inflows from Russia’s western ports have risen to 500,000 barrels a day (b/d), from less than 100,000 pre-war, reckons Reid l’Anson of Kpler, a data firm. In December imports of Russian crude reached 2.2m b/d, or 19% of China’s total, from 1.5m b/d two years ago. In the second half of last year, Iran’s exports to China averaged 1m b/d, a 150% rise from the same period in 2021.

Whereas Western sanctions allow anyone outside the G7 to still import Russian

oil, the Iranian energy industry is subject to so-called secondary sanctions, which restrict third countries. Since 2022, however, the Biden administration has relaxed enforcement and is willing to see rules broken if it means lower prices. The result has been a surge in Chinese imports, with the beneficiaries not China’s state-owned firms, which could one day be exposed to sanctions, but smaller “teapot refineries” with no presence abroad. China also gets cheap gas from Russia: imports via the Power of Siberia pipeline have doubled since Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Iran have little choice but to sell to China. In contrast, China is only subject to restrictions on imports of Western technology—it does not face financial bans or trade embargoes. Therefore it can, and does, buy oil from other countries, which gives it the upper hand in negotiations with its allies. China gets Russian and Iranian supplies at a discount of $15-30 a barrel on the global oil price, and then processes the cheap hydrocarbons, turning them into higher-value products. The production capacity of its petrochemicals industry has grown more in the past two years than that of all other countries combined since 2019. China also cranks out enormous volumes of refined-oil products.

Trade not aid

Boosting commodity trade between the three countries was always going to be the easy bit. Everyone wants oil; once on a ship, it can be sent anywhere. Yet China has an informal policy of limiting dependence on any commodity supplier to 1520% of its total needs, meaning that it is close to the maximum it will want to import from Russia. Although the trade is still enough to provide Russia and Iran with a lifeline, it is helpful only if they can spend the hard currency earned on importing goods. Hence the ambition to develop other types of trade.

China’s exports to Russia have duly soared. As covid-19 rules strangled its economy, China sought to compensate by boosting manufacturing exports. Instead of shoes and T- shirts, it tried to sell highvalue wares, such as machinery and mechanical devices, for which Russia acted as a test market. Last year the biggest importer of Chinese automobiles was not Europe, a destination for its electric vehicles, but Russia, which purchased three times as many petrol cars it did as before the war.

Purchasing-manager surveys show that Iranian companies are constantly short of “raw materials”, a category including both sophisticated wares, like computer chips, and more basic ones, such as plastic parts. This hampers Iran’s manufacturing industry, which is as large as its petroleum sector. Yet China exports few parts and just 300-500 cars a month to Iran, compared with 3,000 or so to neighbouring Iraq. Not many of China’s manufactured-goods exporters, which sell a lot to the West, are brave enough to risk American retribution.

In theory, more business with Russia could help Iran. The two countries supply each other with useful goods. Since 2022 Iran has sold Russia drones and weapons systems that are causing damage in Ukraine—its first military support for a nonIslamic country since the revolution in 1979. Early this year Iran also sent Russia 1m barrels of crude by tanker, another first. But sanctions make deeper ties tricky. Although Russia stopped releasing detailed statistics in 2023, ship-traffic data in the Caspian Sea show only a modest rise since 2022, when the country’s leaders set an ambitious target to boost bilateral trade.

Limited trade between Iran and Russia means they lack common banking channels and payment systems. Despite government pressure, neither SPFS (Russia’s alternative to SWIFT, the global interbank messaging system) nor Mir (Russia’s answer to American credit-card networks) is widely used by Iranian banks. Efforts to de-dollarise trade led to the creation of a rouble-rial exchange mechanism in August 2022, but transaction volumes remain low.

To resist sanctions in the longer run, Iran and Russia also need investment—the weakest area of co-operation at present. China’s stock of foreign direct investment in the Islamic Republic has been flat since 2014, even as it has poured money into other emerging economies, and at roughly $3bn remains puny for an economy of Iran’s size. Deals agreed during the last visit of Iran’s president to Beijing, which could be valued at $10bn at most, are dwarfed by the $50bn China pledged to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s great rival, in 2022.

Although China remains involved in Russian projects such as Arctic LNG, a gasliquefaction facility in the country’s north, it has not snapped up assets dumped by Western firms, notes Rachel Ziemba of CNAS, a think-tank, nor backed new ventures. Russia had been expecting China to bankroll the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, due to carry 50bn cubic metres of gas to the Middle Kingdom when complete—almost as much as Russia’s biggest pipeline used to deliver to Europe. Without China’s support, the project is now in limbo.

A little help from your friends

The alliance has already achieved something remarkable: saving its junior members from collapse in the face of Western embargoes. But has it reached its full potential? The answer depends on the ability of its members to surmount external and internal obstacles.

Various forums aim to promote co-operation and cross-border investment. Last July Iran became the ninth member of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a China-led security alliance that also includes Russia. In December it signed a free-trade agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, which covers much of Central Asia. In January it joined the BRICS, an emerging-market group that includes both China and Russia.

These get-togethers give the trio more chances to talk. At recent summits, Iranian and Russian ministers have revived negotiations to extend the International NorthSouth Transport Corridor ( INSTC), a 7,200km route connecting Russia to the Indian Ocean via Iran. At present Russian grain must travel to the Middle East through the NATO- controlled Bosporus. The proposal, which includes a mixture of roads, rail and ports, could turn Iran into an export outlet for Russia.

Iran’s and Russia’s bureaucracies have relatively little experience of working with one another, and the amount of investment required is daunting: the Russiabacked Eurasian Development Bank estimates it to be $26bn in Iran and Russia alone. Mustering such funding, in two countries not known for investor friendliness, would be hard at the best of times, let alone under sanctions. Still, the idea is gaining traction. On February 1st envoys discussed the next steps for the Rasht-As