572 { China’s Quest
mutual understanding, a partnership like that with Pakistan but not chained
to a neighboring hostile rival, as Pakistan is to India. Chinese leaders recog-
nize Iran as a major regional power, with considerable national capacity and
coherence and with no history of major conflict with, but a very long tradi-
tion of cooperation with, China. Beijing’s fundamental objective vis-à-vis
Iran transcends any particular type of cooperation, and seeks an enduring,
cooperative partnership based on mutual understanding and trust for the
coming era of China’s rise. Chinese weakness in the face of US demands
undermined China’s attractiveness to Tehran as a long-term partner.
Another dimension of Beijing’s calculations regarding management of its
Persian Gulf dilemma was that a number of Arab countries, including impor-
tant ones like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, were rivals of Iran, and often lobbied
Beijing in the same direction as Washington. So too did Israel. This meant that
saying “yes” to Tehran and “no” to the United States could negatively affect
China’s relations with the Arab countries. But at the end of the day, only the
IRI was able and willing to challenge United States efforts to dominate the
Persian Gulf. Beijing’s management of its Persian Gulf dilemma tended to bal-
ance between Washington and Tehran. Beijing accommodated US demands
while also finding ways of giving Tehran some level of Chinese assistance.
The period of closest and most explicitly anti-US cooperation between
the PRC and the IRI came in the early 1990s as US-PRC relations were dete-
riorating. During this period, with MFN linkage looming, Beijing feared a
genuine confrontation with the United States and saw the IRI as a partner in
that unfortunate eventuality. IRI leaders, for their part, seem to have had a
somewhat naive understanding of Chinese policy at this juncture, taking at
face value Beijing’s anti-US hegemony rhetoric. Beijing’s disengagement from
various types of cooperation with Tehran in the mid-1990s, as a function of
US-PRC negotiations to renormalize ties, would educate Iranian leaders, giv-
ing them a much more realistic understanding of Beijing’s calculus. But in the
early 1990s, this Iranian learning process was just beginning.
IRI president Ali Khamenei (soon to be Khomeini’s successor as Supreme
Leader) visited Beijing in May 1989 shortly before Michael Gorbachev. This
high-profile visit finally reciprocated Hua Guofeng’s ill-fated 1978 visit to
Iran, saw the formal beginning of military cooperation (in rebuilding and
modernizing Iran’s military forces), and vastly expanded Chinese participa-
tion in Iran’s postwar economic development. When the Beijing Massacre
occurred shortly after Khamenei’s visit, Tehran gave China strong rhetorical
support in the face of Western criticism and sanctions. Then, as US sanctions
against Beijing hardened, Beijing drew still closer to Tehran.
Li Peng visited Tehran in July 1991 as part of a six-nation Middle East tour.
Li was characteristically blunt in underlining the antihegemony partnership
of the PRC and the IRI: “In the ever-changing international situation, the