The Chinese president has never met his Iranian counterpart.
Xi Jinping will meet his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi for the first time, on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan, Chinese state television CCTV announced on Friday, September 16, without further details. According to this same media, the Chinese president will also meet the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
China, critical of Washington’s sanctions against Tehran, signed a 25-year strategic agreement with Iran in March 2021. Beijing has long sought to strengthen its ties with Tehran, with Xi Jinping having described Iran as “China’s main partner in the Middle East” during a rare visit to the country in 2016.
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Stalled nuclear talks
The meeting between the two leaders comes as talks over a potential deal to end Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons appear to have stalled. Since April 2021, Iran has been engaged in EU-mediated talks to relaunch the JCPOA, the agreement reached in 2015 with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. The previous text exploded in 2018 with the unilateral American withdrawal and the reinstatement of sanctions by Donald Trump, which led to the gradual release by Tehran of its obligations. Xi Jinping and Ebrahim Raisi had spoken by telephone in July.
Moreover, Chinese President Xi Jinpingis about to meetHis Turkish counterpart, on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan, Chinese state television CCTV announced on Friday without further details. The meeting between Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdoganse will take place outside the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which brings together several foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, and is held in the city of Samarkand.
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly expressed to Beijing his concern for the well-being of the Uyghurs, a Muslim and Turkish-speaking Chinese minority whose main members live in Xinjiang (north-west China). Human rights organizations accuse the Chinese authorities of oppressing this population after a wave of bloody attacks that triggered a firm campaign in the name of anti-terrorism.
Turkey is onlydialogue partnerof the SCO, which brings together China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four former Soviet republics in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). It was created in 2001 as a political, economic and security cooperation tool competing with Western organizations. Both Turkey and China were accused at the end of August by French President Emmanuel Macron of having a “influential, neo-colonial and imperialist agenda” in Africa. Ankara had denounced comments “unacceptable” and “unwelcome“.