Ayatollah Mohammad Emami- Kashani called out during his Friday sermon that China and Russia should “stand firm” against the evil effort of Britain and the US to further impose any sanctions on Iran. The P5+1 that includes both China and Russia are seeking new sanctions.
There are many clear and obvious reasons why clerics should not be talking politics, and this is one of them. The fact is that Russia and China are not quite the kind of friends of Iran as Mr.Emami-Kashani would like to think they are. It is true that Russia and China initially opposed the sanctions against Iran, but it is also known that these two countries have actually profited economically because of the same sanctions.
This “friendship” that politicians and clerics in the Islamic Republic of Iran consider useful, is nothing more than a “doostie khale kherse”!
Either Iran’s politicians have no problems with this one-sided friendship or they are ignorant of the fact that they are being played! When the Russians attacked South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Iran’s media blew this up into former-USSR-propaganda proportions! I don’t think Russian media even claimed this attack to be as much as a success as Iranian media did!
I hope Iran’s politicians are not counting too much on China and Russia’s support when negotiations on the nuclear issue escalates even further and military options come into perspective. Because then they could be in for an ugly surprise.
Consider that after years of political and economic cooperation, the US president discusses issues of religious freedom and the freedom of speech with its Chinese counterpart during their meetings at the Olympics in Beijing. If the American president is advised to interfere in China’s internal affairs, something he obviously held low during previous years, his successor could continue this trend in order to put more pressure on the relations next to the current dead-end negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.
If that would happen, China would not be the first “friend” in line to support Iran, since it then suffers from the same accusations of human rights violations. Russia, who already has been told off by the US for attacking Georgia (and according to some Russian bloggers has made a trade-off with the US on Iran), would have nothing to gain by supporting Iran. It has other economic and geopolitical interests in mind.
It seems that when it really matters, Iran stands alone. But with such finely educated and wise statesmen and politicians, who needs friends anyway?
