China’s First-Ever Trilateral Anti-Terrorist Talks With Iran & Pakistan Likely Concern W-CPEC+
India should begin deliberating what it’ll do in the event that some Chinese-Iranian trade is conducted across Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since it appears as though this is the long-term outcome that Beijing wanted to advance through the trilateral anti-terrorist talks that it just hosted with Iran and Pakistan.
The first-ever trilateral anti-terrorist talks between China, Iran, and Pakistan took place in Beijing last week. While China has excellent ties with those two countries, they’ve each had a troubled history with one another, largely over cross-border militancy in the transnational Balochistan region. Iran and Pakistan have accused one another of hosting what the other regards as terrorist groups, which toxified their bilateral ties for years.
Iranian-Pakistani relations remarkably improved last month when their leaders jointly inaugurated the Mand-Pishin border market and pledged to pursue more joint projects. This development followed the Chinese-mediated Iranian-Saudi rapprochement from mid-March, which resolved their security dilemma and thus gave Saudi-allied Pakistan the freedom to pursue more balanced relations with Iran. Islamabad then made the decision in early June to allow barter with Iran, which could further improve trade ties.
The gradual improvement of Iranian-Pakistani relations over this time correlated with the deterioration of their respective relations with the Taliban. Pakistan threatened to go to war with that group in early January over its hosting of TTP militants that Islamabad considers to be terrorists, while clashes broke out along the Afghan-Iranian border late last month over those two’s ongoing water rights dispute. At the same time, China’s ties with the Taliban remained cordial and economic-centric.
It was within this complex security context that last week’s first-ever trilateral anti-terrorist talks between China, Iran, and Pakistan took place. The People’s Republic doesn’t want any unexpected explosion in cross-border militancy to derail the Iranian-Pakistani rapprochement, which is an ever-present threat due to the presence of Baloch militants in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Should another incident occur, then it’s imperative that neither neighbor blames the other like they usually do.
China’s interest in preventing the return of those two’s border tensions stems from its grand strategic vision to integrate Eurasia into a Community of Common Destiny through the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in which those two participate as key players. Iran was reportedly promised $400 billion worth of investment from China over the next quarter-century as part of their 2021 strategic partnership deal while Pakistan hosts BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) flagship project.
CPEC is ultra-strategic for China in and of itself as a non-US-controlled shortcut to the Indian Ocean, but it can also be expanded in the western direction via W-CPEC+ through Iran, which would connect two of China’s top BRI partners in that scenario and thus supercharge its Eurasian integration plans. For that to happen, China must ensure that Iran and Pakistan don’t blame one another in the event that Afghan-based Baloch militants once again go on the attack against either, ergo last week’s trilateral talks.
All three countries’ people would benefit by having W-CPEC+ enter into fruition as a viable transregional connectivity corridor, but the reader should also be informed that this vision isn’t without controversy. India opposes CPEC out of principle due to it transiting through Pakistani-controlled Kashmiri territory that Delhi claims as its own per its decades-long stance towards that conflict. Accordingly, it’s refused to participate in BRI out of protest that this global initiative’s flagship project violates its territorial integrity.
Indo-Pak tensions have been a constant since those two’s independence after World War II, while Indo-Sino tensions are on the rise. The last-mentioned pair’s border dispute, which owes its origins to the British era and remains a purely bilateral issue despite the US’ attempted meddling, saw those two nearly go to war over the Galwan River Valley in summer 2020. Multiple rounds of talks since then have failed to resolve this problem, thus leading to an impasse that prevents the normalization of their ties.
The strategic insight from the preceding two paragraphs explains why India regards CPEC as a security challenge despite China and Pakistan’s claims that it’s a purely economic project. As such, there’s no doubt that Delhi is opposed to the further internationalization of this initiative via W-CPEC+, the security basis of which Beijing sought to build through the first-ever anti-terrorist talks that it just hosted with Iran and Pakistan. That said, India must also tread carefully in terms of how it responds to this.
Bilateral relations with Iran have always been important for India, more so nowadays than ever after those two revived the long-dormant North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) over the past 15 months in order to comprehensively expand trade with their shared Russian strategic partner. The Islamic Republic also facilitates India’s economic access to Central Asia via the NSTC’s eastern corridor, so it’s not in Delhi’s interests to offend Iran by publicly lumping it together with China and Pakistan over W-CPEC+.
At the same time, it’s not in Iran’s interests to offend India over its participation in W-CPEC+ either since that those two’s NSTC helps the Islamic Republic avert any potentially disproportionate strategic dependence on China. Their megaproject with Russia is too important to both of them for Iran to risk derailing it by using W-CPEC+, yet that second-mentioned corridor is still an attractive means for Iran to scale its bilateral real-sector trade with China, especially in the absence of any viable alternative.
These strategic-economic dynamics place Indo-Iranian relations in an unexpected dilemma. Iran doesn’t want to violate India’s territorial integrity, but W-CPEC+ is the most realistic means for its struggling economy to quickly scale real-sector trade with China. Likewise, India doesn’t want to meddle in Iran’s economic ties with China, but it also doesn’t want Iran violating its territorial integrity by using W-CPEC+. Unless some informal compromise is reached, their NSTC cooperation could suffer as a result.
One possibility could be for Iran to promise India that trade with China along this controversial route won’t be conducted by its nationals out of respect for its partner’s territorial integrity. Since Iran’s difficult economic conditions might compel its leadership to rely on W-CPEC+ as its only realistic pressure valve, and India isn’t willing to risk a nuclear war with Pakistan to physically stop the core CPEC project, this could represent a pragmatic solution for the time being.
India should begin deliberating what it’ll do in the event that some Chinese-Iranian trade is conducted across Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since it appears as though this is the long-term outcome that Beijing wanted to advance through the trilateral anti-terrorist talks that it just hosted with Iran and Pakistan. Its Iranian partner’s economy is struggling so much that its leadership might not be able to reject China’s potential proposal to scale trade across that route in spite of it violating India’s territorial integrity.
India will continue opposing CPEC in all its manifestations, but it also has an interest in retaining cooperation with Iran on the NSTC too, which leads to a dilemma that’ll require creative diplomacy in order to resolve. It remains to be seen whether the W-CPEC+ will indeed enter into fruition like China envisages since it could still be derailed by Afghan-based Baloch militants, but if it materializes, then India needs to be ready with a plan for how it’ll react to Iran’s likely use of this controversial corridor.