04.09.2025

Global hard truths

Where does the Islamic Republic sit in the international pecking order? Will the alliance with China and Russia save the regime? Yassamine Mather investigates. Meanwhile, there are moves on the left

In the final days of August, three major European powers - the United Kingdom, France and Germany - moved to trigger the ‘snapback’ mechanism against Iran’s Islamic Republic.

This mechanism, built into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal), allows any signatory to claim Tehran is in violation and thereby restore all previous UN sanctions. ‘Snapback’, conceived as an enforcement tool to keep Iran in check, has always been controversial. When the Trump administration unilaterally exited the JCPOA in 2018 and then attempted to invoke snapback, other security council members insisted the US had forfeited that legal standing. The dispute revealed not only the fragility of the deal, but also the political rivalries surrounding it.

In the last few days, the European decision to revive snapback carries weight well beyond legal technicalities. Although the sanctions formally re-enter into force in October 2025, their announcement alone has sent shockwaves through Iran’s battered economy. Its currency, the rial, has plunged further, foreign investment has evaporated and expectations of deeper isolation loom large. For Tehran, already grappling with domestic unrest, environmental crises and the aftershocks of the 12-day war with Israel, the move represents a tightening noose.

UN Security Council

Against this backdrop, Iran has no option but to lean heavily on Russia and China. Both permanent members of the UN security council and signatories to the JCPOA, they provide Tehran with some diplomatic cover, a level of economic support and limited strategic cooperation. Yet their assistance is calculated, pragmatic and constrained by larger global interests.

China remains Iran’s main economic partner. Despite sanctions, Beijing is effectively the buyer of last resort for Iranian crude - reportedly absorbing nearly 90% of Iran’s oil exports. In the first half of 2025, Chinese imports averaged 1.38 million barrels per day, slightly down from 1.48 million in 2024, but still accounting for around 14.6% of China’s total oil imports. Much of this trade is hidden: shipments are routed through a shadow fleet of aging tankers, with cargoes relabelled as Malaysian crude before arriving at smaller Chinese refineries. This explains why official Chinese customs data has not listed Iranian oil since mid-2022, even though its imports remain steady.

In addition to oil, China is now Iran’s main commercial partner. Iranian exports consist largely of raw and semi-processed materials, such as iron ore, metals, plastics and organic chemicals, while Chinese exports to Iran are dominated by machinery, vehicles and high-tech equipment. Electromechanical products alone make up nearly 40% of the total. Since 2021, a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement has framed these exchanges, with Beijing emerging as one of the top contractors in Iran’s infrastructure, energy and engineering projects. Chinese investment guides openly rank Iran as a leading market for construction, technology and prefabricated equipment exports - a clear signal of Beijing’s commercial priorities.

For Tehran, this trade is a lifeline. With western markets closed and its regional economy constrained, Chinese purchases sustain oil revenues, while Chinese goods fill the vacuum left by departing European suppliers. But this lifeline is fragile. There are fears that the reactivation of UN sanctions could complicate shipping, with new provisions allowing international inspections of vessels suspected of carrying Iranian crude. Many warn that even China may struggle to maintain current levels of imports if scrutiny intensifies.

Russia’s role is less commercial, but equally important. Moscow continues to trade energy and weapons systems with Tehran and helps develop alternative financial channels to bypass the US-dominated SWIFT financial messaging system used by banks. Together with China, it promotes settlements in national currencies: Iran has been partially integrated into China’s yuan-based CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) network, while Russia pushes its SPFS platform (an alternative to SWIFT, developed by the Bank of Russia in response to western sanctions).

Diplomatically, Russia and China act as Iran’s shield at the UN. They have rejected western moves to condemn Tehran’s nuclear programme or escalate sanctions, arguing that the JCPOA must be preserved and that the US - having abandoned the deal - must first return to compliance before demanding anything of Iran. This is Iran’s own stance and provides Tehran with legitimacy on the international stage.

Both powers also use international forums to express some support. At the International Atomic Energy Agency they occasionally try to soften or dilute resolutions against Iran. Within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), they promote Iran’s integration into Eurasian structures, aligning with Tehran’s ‘Look east’ doctrine articulated by supreme leader Ali Khamenei. President Massoud Pezeshkian’s visit to China this week, to attend the SCO summit in Tianjin, is part of this effort to demonstrate Iran’s pivot toward Asia and to strengthen ties with both Beijing and Moscow.

Yet, even here, there are many limits. During the 12-Day War, neither Russia nor China offered support for Iran. Russian officials emphasised their relationship with Israel, home to the world’s second-largest Russian-speaking population,¹ while Chinese media downplayed its reliance on Iranian oil, framing the conflict instead as a disruption to global energy markets. This cautious diplomacy reflects each country’s balancing act: Moscow values its ties with Israel, and Beijing maintains close economic and technological relations with Israel.

On the strategic front, Russia has relied on Iran’s cheap drones since the Ukraine war. In return, Tehran expected Russia to provide advanced air defence and aerospace technologies. Such exchanges would have significantly upgraded Iran’s defensive capabilities. However, so far there is no sign of such deliveries.

China’s military posture is even more restrained. Reports after the Iran-Israel war suggested Beijing had supplied air-defence systems to Tehran, but these were quickly denied by the Chinese embassy in Israel, frustrating Iranian media. Beijing invited Pezeshkian to attend its September 3 Victory Day military parade alongside Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un - a symbolic gesture interpreted in Tehran as reassurance. Yet Chinese policy-makers remain reluctant to cross the line into overt military aid, given the risk of jeopardising relations with the US, Europe and Israel.

Within Iran, frustration is growing. Platforms such as the Azad YouTube channel argue that repeated high-level visits to Moscow and Beijing have delivered little in terms of tangible defence guarantees. Israel’s ability to dominate Iranian airspace during the 12-Day War underscored the urgent need for stronger security arrangements, which neither Russia nor China appears willing to provide in full.

Belt and Road

Ultimately, Russian and Chinese support is shaped not by altruism, but self-interest. For Beijing, stability and energy security are paramount. Iran is valuable as a supplier of discounted oil and as a node in the Belt and Road Initiative, but China will not risk its much larger trade relationships with the west. For Moscow, Iran is useful as a partner in undermining US influence and sustaining oil prices, but Russia’s resources are tied up in Ukraine. Neither country desires a nuclear-armed Iran that could destabilise the region still further.

In this sense, Pezeshkian’s mission to China encapsulates Iran’s broader dilemma: it has tied its future to a ‘Look east’ strategy at a time when both Moscow and Beijing are cautious, transactional and unwilling to jeopardise their global priorities for Tehran’s sake. Iran may gain enough support to endure, but not enough to escape the cycle of sanctions, isolation and crisis management.

As reformists promote concessions to the west and the regime conducts secret talks with the US and European countries, conservatives within the Islamic Republic call for withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and presumably for the achieving of nuclear military capability. This is a misguided suggestion. It would certainly provide Israel and the US with an excuse for another war, which Iran would lose.

Inside the country, there have been attempts to build united fronts to confront both the foreign military threat and the Islamic Republic itself. However, most of these remain delusional. Apparently, some people inside Iran have nominated me to be their representative in a delegate conference of 84 members to be held by the Republican Front of Iran, outside the country, but with delegates named from within. Their statement epitomises the confusion of sections of the Iranian left. They are rightly opposed to both foreign intervention and the regime. However, their aim of achieving a “secular, free, democratic Iran” pursuing an independent foreign policy is an illusion. The example of Iran’s Islamic Republic has proved beyond any doubt that an independent foreign policy by any country in the Middle East or indeed anywhere in the global south requires:

• the overthrow of capitalism in that country;
• an international, regional battle against imperialism and for the establishment of socialist regimes in the region and beyond.

For all its repressive, reactionary policies, the Islamic dictatorship’s failure to maintain an independent foreign policy has nothing to do with nuclear enrichment or support for regional military proxies. It has everything to do with its complete dependence on international capitalism, debts accumulated under successive reformist and conservative governments to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and with pursuing neoliberal economic policies that have alienated very large sections of the population - exploited in insecure, low-paid, often temporary jobs - making them enemies of successive governments, even when the threat of foreign military intervention is real.

Rather than becoming a delegate to such a gathering, I have no option but to expose the myth that a state like Iran can somehow become democratic and ‘independent’ while pursuing the rationale of capital in the 21st century.

Parallel to this, the left - in exile and inside Iran - is also trying to find some form of ‘unity’. Of course, after many failed attempts to achieve cooperation, never mind unity, given the age and political baggage of those involved, it is difficult to see how anything can be achieved. However, a unity call by comrade Yadi Shishvani from the Unity of Communist Fedayeen, has gained a lot of support. More than 150 comrades - both members and supporters of existing organisations, as well as independent socialists – attended two very long meetings organised on the issue.

Two meetings

I was at both and the debates reflected the urgency of the situation and the commitment to support the struggles of the Iranian working class at a time of war and imperialist aggression. However, the call was also well received because of the prestige of comrade Shishvani, a former Fedayeen labour activist in the Tabriz tractor factory, who a year and a half ago led his organisation’s departure from an “alliance of Iranian communists and socialists”, following its failure to take a strong stance against Zionism and genocide in Gaza.

These two initial meetings did not come to concrete conclusions, and some of the debates seemed irrelevant. However, this is the first time in decades that so many from different political tendencies of the left, inside and outside Iran, have come together. There is a faint hope that the discussion can at least lead to a more organised, coordinated cooperation between socialist groups and individuals in supporting the current struggles of the Iranian working class against imperialism and the capitalist state in Iran.

1. That is, outside the former Soviet Union.↩︎