HONG KONG – Does it make sense to talk about a Beijing- axis? Apparently no, when one learns that Iran’s application to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was flatly denied at the 2008 summit in Tajikistan.
Apparently yes, when one sees how the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran and the collective leadership in Beijing have dealt with their recent turmoil – the “green revolution” in Tehran and the Uighur riots in Urumqi – reawakening in the West the ghostly mythology of “Asian despotism”.
The Iran- relationship is like a game of Chinese boxes. Amid the turbulence, glorious or terrifying, of their equally millenarian histories, when one sees an Islamic Republic that now reveals itself as a militarized theocracy and a Popular Republic that is in fact a capitalist oligarchy, things are not what they seem to be.
No matter what recently happened in Iran, consolidating the power the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC axis, the relationship will continue to develop within the framework of a clash between US hyperpower – declining as it may be – and the aspiring Chinese b…
