446 { China’s Quest
Iran’s new leaders China’s new policies of religious tolerance. China’s Muslims
enjoyed full freedom of religion while participating in the construction of
New China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang
explained. He also handed out invitations to IRI leaders to visit China and
see for themselves the reality of religious freedom there. Zhang Jie’s efforts
contributed to improving the PRC image among Iran’s new Islamist leaders.
It was Iran’s involvement in war with Iraq which really transformed the
IRI-PRC relation, however. Iraq under the leadership of Saddam Hussein
launched an all-out attack on Iran starting on September 22, 1980, in an effort
to seize Iran’s majority-Arab and oil-rich western province of Khuzestan.
(There are deep ethnic cleavages between Arabs and Persians.) The resulting
eight-year war was an extremely difficult one for Iran, whose armed forces
had been purged, disorganized, and demoralized by the revolution, and who
were armed with American-made weapons. Iran at war needed arms, fast
and in large quantities. As Iran mobilized its numerically superior and reli-
giously zealous manpower, and as existing stockpiles of weapons were used
up on the battlefield, Tehran’s need for arms grew. The Soviet Union could
not be a supplier; it was allied by treaty with Iraq. France too tilted toward
Iraq. The United States was not a good prospect: its diplomats were still being
held hostage by Iran when the war began. (Tehran’s deepening estrange-
ment from Washington was one reason why Saddam Hussein decided to
grab Khuzestan.) Iran’s supreme leader was also deeply hostile to the United
States. China, however, was able to supply arms, fast, cheap, and relatively
simple to use—exactly the type of weapons Iran needed.
China quickly proclaimed neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war. Vice Premier Ji
Pengfei happened to be visiting the Yemen Arab Republic when the war broke
out, and only a couple of days after the war began he announced China’s
neutrality. Framing the Iran-Iraq conflict in terms of Mao’s Three Worlds
Theory, Ji called the conflict an unfortunate and unwise one between broth-
erly developing countries of the Third World which could give one or both
hegemony-seeking superpowers an opportunity to interfere in the affairs of
the Gulf. The two warring parties should immediately cease hostilities and
peacefully negotiate a settlement of the issues between them, Ji said. This stance
did not please Ayatollah Khomeini. Such a stance—which more or less copied
the stances of the other Permanent Members of the Security Council—failed
to distinguish between the aggressor and the victim of aggression, and was
the type of amoral behavior that governed the national interests calculations
of the “arrogant powers” such as the United States and China. Beijing would
maintain the policy of neutrality throughout the Iran-Iraq war.
The first high-level IRI delegation to the PRC came in February 1981, five
months after the Iran-Iraq war began and as the vast requirements of that
war were becoming apparent to Iran’s leaders. The delegation was led by par-
liamentarian Ali Khamenei (not to be confused with Ruhollah Khomeini), a