576 { China’s Quest
Beijing also insisted that it would be bound only by sanctions agreed to
by the Security Council, where China had a veto. US attempts to impose
sanctions via unilateral legislation or executive decisions were denounced by
Beijing as “extraterritorial,” that is, attempts by a state to apply its domestic law
beyond its own sovereign territory. These were manifestations of hegemony,
great-power politics, and unilateral arrogance, said Beijing. China’s restric-
tion of sanctions in this fashion was of great benefit to Tehran. For several
years, the United States deferred to China’s (and other countries’) objections
to unilateral US laws and executive orders imposing sanctions on third coun-
tries for their commercial dealings with Iran that had not been proscribed by
multilateral UN decisions. Only in 2010 did the United States set aside these
objections and begin implementing broad and hard measures denying access
to US markets to third-country firms, including China’s, that conduct busi-
ness with the IRI. Beijing continued to protest these US “unilateral and extra-
territorial” sanctions. In spite of this, Chinese firms have often complied with
US requirements to disengage from dealings with Iran. This may be because
firms choose to operate in the large and rich US market in preference to the
far smaller Iranian market. Be that as it may, other Chinese companies with
no operations in the United States have picked up much of China’s business
in Iran. Coordination of Security Council activities on the Iran nuclear issue
was a major aspect of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership.
Military cooperation was another dimension of PRC-IRI partnership. In
1990, China’s Commission for Science Technology and Industry for National
Defense (COSTIND) signed a ten-year military technology cooperation
agreement with Iran. Ballistic and guided missiles as well as various types
of electronic surveillance, guidance, and targeting technology were major
areas of cooperation. Iran acquired from China surveillance, search, and
fire control radars, along with various types of anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and
surface-to-surface missiles. Among these were advanced anti-ship cruise
missiles modeled after the French Exocet. These high-speed, sea-skimming
anti-ship missiles could be fired from submerged submarines via torpedo
tubes, from aircraft, or from surface ships, including fast attack craft, which
China also supplied to Iran. This would permit targets to be attacked simul-
taneously from several different vectors—considerably increasing the prob-
ability of a successful strike. These were highly potent missiles, far more
advanced than the Chinese-made Silkworm missiles used by Iran against
tankers in the Gulf in the 1980s. One implicit target for these anti-ship cruise
missiles were warships of the US Navy operating in or near the Persian Gulf.
China insisted that such cooperation was part of the normal and unobjection-
able range of friendly cooperation between states. The United States differed
and insisted, in 1996–1997, that China abandon cooperation in the manufac-
ture and development of advanced anti-ship cruise missiles. Beijing complied
as part of the mid-1997 deal renormalizing US-PRC relations.