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The New Silk Road and the Threat to American Domination
Kevin Crane
The mass media in the West has a perverse talent for talking about something a lot without telling you much of anything about it. Iran is an extreme case of this: we have been hearing about the country daily for weeks, and very regularly for many years before that, but the things that are said are utterly limited to three choice topics:
- Iran has a religiously led government.
- Iran has a long-standing rivalry with Israel and supports various anti-Israel armed groups.
- Most of all, Iran has been trying to get a nuclear programme underway, which it says is for making power stations, but Israel and America say is to build nuclear weapons.
The focus on nukes is so utterly singular, that for many Westerners it would be difficult to imagine what else ever gets built in Iran. Any other news about what is going on in the country doesn’t tend to reach us, even (or perhaps especially) when it could be of crucial importance to the whole world, and certainly if the timing of such an event happens to coincide with the renewed prospect of war. These are many of the reasons why so few of us got to hear about the historic opening of a new international rail line that has linked Iran to China, just last month. You could search English language news websites for some time and find virtually nothing about this. However, it’s huge news and adds a layer of meaning to the tensions between Iran and the U.S.-led world order.
Not Everywhere had a ‘Golden Age of Rail’
Only two continents have ever had true unifying rail connectivity: Europe and North America. This is a direct consequence of imperialism and colonialism. The function of the railways in metropolitan centres of empire was to facilitate transport and communication around them. In the colonised countries, by contrast, railways served a completely different function: they were machines for extracting resources from centres of primary production to seaports. There, this cargo could be shipped away to be used by the industries of the wealthy nations.
Apologists for empire often like to boast that the colonising countries ‘gave the natives railways’ but the reality is that those railways were not structured to meet the needs of the host people. This is a large component of why many Global South countries ultimately just let their colonial rail systems go to ruin after turning independent: the cost of maintaining them wasn’t justified by the benefits and the cost of adapting them to be beneficial was too high.
India and China are definitely cases in point of the extractive railway model: their systems were funded and built by Western interests looking to get the best possible returns on investment. In real terms, that meant building the most efficient means to get crops and other basic goods out of the two massive countries. In Iran, even less was built by Western industry: oil could more easily be extracted to the ports via pipelines.
International connections across Asian nations were always limited in construction because Western capitalism has never had any real need for them. Western powers have dominated the seas for five hundred years, and they still do, even though the specific dominant power has changed (from Spain, to the Netherlands, to Britain, to America) in that time.
Shipping lanes have never yet declined in importance. In our age of globalisation, they are more depended upon than ever, as our severely asymmetric logistics chains funnel ever more of the world’s natural resources into concentrated manufacturing hubs in Asia. From there, they become products that must be delivered to the entire globe.
Many of the raw resources are simply fossil fuels, and significant quantities of CO2 are emitted by ships burning their own fuel to deliver more fuel to get burned elsewhere. This is obviously bad for the environment, but it has been working for capitalism, so it is currently unlikely to stop.
However, what has become a concern for capitalism is the disruption that results from the regional wars triggered by Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. The Middle East has multiple narrow straights that are crucial for world ocean freight. The governments of America and its European allies have been very focused on their ability to keep these shipping lanes open. It has not been in their interests to draw too much attention to a rival power that has been pushing for a different solution.
One Belt, One Road
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping toured central Asian countries and declared a new government policy that Anglophone journalists somewhat awkwardly translated as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, although ‘New Silk Road Economic Belt’ was a closer translation of what he called it. The name invokes the memory of what historians refer to as the ‘Silk Road’, an ancient network of trading posts that stretched from coastal China all the way to Roman Europe. For some seventeen hundred years, this historic chain of merchant communities enabled Europeans to purchase goods, such as spices and the exquisite material, silk, and leave them to marvel at how cultures they couldn’t communicate with were producing such things. The Silk Road faded away as the capitalist world system emerged. The road was rendered irrelevant with the rise of Western shipping and passed somewhat into legend.
China’s New Silk Road is planned to recreate the route of the ancient road. In doing so, the intent has been to connect up the major population centres of Asia, which is where a majority of human beings actually live, to create a more efficient means of connecting China to the rest of the world. International responses to the policy have been mixed: some in the West have chosen to see the multi-billion-dollar project as an unalloyed good, they just love free trade that much. However, there has been rising anti-China sentiment in many Global North countries for decades at least, and nowhere is this more so than Donald Trump’s USA.
The original plan had been intended to join China to their closely matched competitor and long-term frenemy India, but a combination of domestic far-right politics in Delhi and pressure from the Americans scotched those plans. So, the Chinese have put the India link on hold and, since 2021, work has focused on just ploughing through the post-Soviet ‘stans’ and establishing the first truly trans-Asian railway.
After just four years, a functioning new rail line can be found starting from the West Chinese regional capital Urumqi. Through there, it passes through Kazakhstan’s legendary city of the orchards, Almaty. It then runs through the famously beautiful Uzbek city of Samarkand, on to Turkmenistan’s sci-fi capital Ashgabat. And from there, last week, a freight train finally pulled in at the brand-new ‘dry port’ of Iran’s capital, Tehran.
Transporting cargo between China and Iran has been reduced from a forty-day journey by sea, through politically and militarily insecure straights at Hormuz and Molucca, to one that takes just fifteen days across landlocked countries far beyond the control of Western forces. The head of the Iranian rail operator has described the undertaking as ‘steel arteries of independence’, and with good cause. For the first time, Iran can now export oil to its number-one customer, the Chinese, and neither American naval power nor economic sanctions can do much about it. China, for its part, can also now look to develop Iran as a stop-off point for goods they seek to export further West, without geopolitical conflicts, in which they don’t wish to join, getting in the way.
The apparent lack of interest in the trans-Asian freight route may, in reality, mask fear on the part of Western elites. Many of the core calculations upon which their foreign policy is predicated may be on the cusp of going out of date. This is particularly true in light of the current Israel-centric wars. America and Britan’s most direct interventions in the conflict until last week had been to fight the Yemini Ansarallah government (called ‘the Houthis’ in most of the media), in order to keep Red Sea shipping lanes open. Much of the speculation about how Iran will respond to being directly attacked has focused on if they will move to close the Straight of Hormuz. The presumption has been that the value of these factors is fixed in world trade. There was also a long-term assumption that Iran could be cut off from supplies of high-technology equipment and weapons by blocking Chinese ships.
The End of a Very Short American Century?
The section of the left to which Counterfire belongs has always argued that America’s wars of the twenty-first century have been an attempt to avert that country’s relative decline against rising powers, of which China is the most important. Although these forever wars began in Afghanistan, the U.S. shifted its attention rapidly to the Middle East and has remained utterly focused on it, because of the intersection between crucial trade routes and access to fossil fuels in the region.
Multiple factors have chopped and changed over a quarter of a century, but three of the constants have been that Israel was always America’s highly valued vassal, Iran has always been a hated renegade state, and America has always had the strategic advantage over other powers. There has been a significant rupture within the American establishment about whether their aggressive policy can, or should, be continued. What the trans-Asian railway may represent, however, is that this debate could be rendered moot. It might already be too late for them to hold off American decline relative to Chinese ascendancy for very much longer.
We can see from the recent actions of Donald Trump that he is trying to protect American domination with a combined strategy of warfare and economic leverage. So, in the week after illegally bombing Iran, he casually announces that there is now a ceasefire and he’s willing to discuss oil-trade terms with both them and the Chinese. This looks erratic, but it speaks to a strategic perspective in which he wants other governments to know that he can and will resort to violence, whilst he also acknowledges that overreliance on violence may simply accelerate a shift away from systems of trade where America has control. His social-media messaging indicates that he expects China to carry on buying shipments of U.S. fossil fuels in return for America using its military might in Asia less frequently.
As regards China itself, it needs to be stressed that the country also pursues its own interests. There is a version of left-wing thinking, which is more prevalent on the internet than in real life, that wants to think China is motivated by an inherent anti-imperialism to aid it’s ‘brothers and sisters’ in the rest of the postcolonial world. It should be noted that the Chinese government themselves do not make any such claim, and it would be a lie if they did. For all the revolutionary regalia that it dusts off at official functions, the Chinese state is thoroughly capitalist and thoroughly integrated into global capitalism. The idea that China was going to leap to the rescue of this or that oppressed people has always been fanciful: they have continued to cheerfully trade with Israel throughout the Gaza genocide and have been carrying out repression of their own in order to build the New Silk Road, notably in the Xinjiang region where Urumqi is. They are allied to Iran because it is good sense for them to be, a mutually beneficial relationship with the also capitalist Iran.
Ultimately, what this development has done is confirm a widely held view that the world America shaped and dominated is coming to an end one way or another. The most pressing task for us right now remains struggling to prevent the decline of American imperialism from being ever bloodier and more destructive, by continuing to oppose Western warmongering in the Middle East and avoiding a potentially world-ending war with China.
(Courtesy: Counterfire, a British socialist organisation that also runs a website.)
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SWIFT’s Decline: How Global Powers are Escaping the Dollar Trap
Aidan J. Simardone
The weaponization of global finance has become a cornerstone of US foreign policy. Central to this has been Washington’s control over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a financial messaging service once considered a neutral platform but now openly used to enforce western sanctions and isolate adversaries.
While US President Donald Trump threatened economic punishment for countries that ditched the dollar, his own first 100 days in office saw the steepest decline in the currency since the Nixon era. That symbolic moment coincided with a global shift already underway: an accelerating effort by nations to reduce their dependence on US-controlled financial infrastructure.
Today, an expanding coalition of states – some sanctioned, others simply cautious – is turning away from the US dollar and the SWIFT network, embracing new financial systems that promise to operate beyond Washington’s reach.
A tool of economic warfare
SWIFT is not a bank or a payment processor; it is a messaging platform that allows financial institutions to send secure transaction instructions across borders. Its core appeal lies in its speed, encryption, and near-universal adoption and standardization. Banks in different countries, operating in different languages and currencies, have long relied on it to do business seamlessly.
That image took a hit in 2006, when it was revealed that SWIFT had quietly provided transaction data to the CIA and US Treasury as part of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP). That surveillance continues, with the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring SWIFT messages today.
Then came 2012, when bipartisan hawks from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) pressured SWIFT to cut ties with Tehran, accusing the country of violating both US and EU sanctions. SWIFT quickly complied. Yet when Palestinian activists demanded the same be done to Israel over war crimes, the campaign was ignored. With the precedent set, SWIFT booted out North Korea in 2017 and Russia in 2022.
The message was clear: SWIFT was no longer neutral. It was a tool of economic warfare.
A new architecture emerges
Being cut off from SWIFT can cripple an economy overnight. Banks become isolated, unable to send or receive payments even with non-western partners. Trade seizes up. But the tactic is proving self-defeating.
After the west threatened to disconnect it following the 2014 Crimea annexation, Russia developed its own platform: the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), launched in 2017. Today, SPFS includes 177 foreign institutions from 25 countries.
Iran, which announced in 2023 that it had begun integrating interbank communication and transfer systems with Russia, is working on its own financial messaging infrastructure, known as Automated Currency Management and Exchange Reporting (ACUMER).
But the biggest challenge to SWIFT is not from sanctioned states – it is from rising powers anticipating future US hostility.
China launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in 2015. While it still uses SWIFT for many transactions, CIPS has its own messaging layer, enabling seamless trade with Russia and other partners. Nearly 4,800 banks now participate in CIPS – about half of SWIFT’s total, despite being less than a decade old.
Recognizing the need for a unified, cross-border alternative, the BRICS bloc began developing “BRICS Pay” in 2018. With the bloc now surpassing the G7 in economic size, BRICS countries make up over a third of the world’s economy. BRICS Pay began pilot payments in 2019 and received full backing from China in October 2024. While still in its pilot stage, its potential scale makes it SWIFT’s most serious rival yet.
Swift exit for the dollar
But the move away from SWIFT is no longer confined to America’s adversaries.
In 2022, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – a bloc of 10 largely US-friendly states consisting of 600 million people – launched the Regional Payment Connectivity (RPC) initiative. It leverages national real-time payment systems like Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay to enable direct transfers without relying on SWIFT.
Previously, cross-border transactions between ASEAN states required conversion into and out of US dollars. For instance, if someone sends money from Singapore to the Philippines, the Singapore dollars would be converted into American dollars, and then the American dollars would be converted into Philippine pesos. With RPC, such conversions are bypassed, reducing costs and boosting efficiency.
That same year, the African Union launched the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), which also skips SWIFT and the dollar intermediary.
This quiet revolution among Washington’s partners signals a deeper shift: even allies are wary of SWIFT’s politicization.
Shattering the monopoly
Despite this trend, SWIFT is not disappearing tomorrow. Many institutions use it in tandem with alternatives to maximize market access. But the spread of new messaging systems gives countries unprecedented options to assert economic sovereignty.
In 2012, Iran had to rely on bartering and gold smuggling to bypass sanctions. Today, it can trade with China via CIPS and with Russia via SPFS. As more states adopt similar systems, the impact of any future SWIFT bans is significantly reduced.
That undermines SWIFT’s key selling points. Security? Damaged by US surveillance and the 2016 Bangladesh Bank hack, which saw $81 million stolen. Speed? Eclipsed by real-time systems like RPC and PAPSS. Universality? Fading with each country expelled from the network.
SWIFT’s real strength lies in its network effect: It works because everyone uses it. But with each politically motivated disconnection, that network shrinks. In contrast, China’s CIPS has no history of broad sanctions, making it a safer bet for states seeking financial stability.
The dollar’s grip loosens
The decline of SWIFT goes hand in hand with the weakening of the US dollar’s global role. Since SWIFT serves as a gatekeeper, Washington can punish any country that tries to ditch the dollar in its trades. But once alternative systems remove that leverage, countries can explore other trading currencies. Moreover, real-time platforms like RPC reduce dependence on intermediary currencies altogether.
China and Saudi Arabia are now exploring renminbi-based trade. That shift would have been unthinkable in the dollar-dominated era of SWIFT’s peak.
Of course, US financial supremacy will not vanish overnight. But the rapid rise of parallel messaging systems shows that global powers – both adversarial and allied – are charting paths out of the west’s financial orbit.
(Aidan is an immigration lawyer & writer and has a master’s degree in Global Affairs. Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.)
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Iran Ready to Ditch GPS for China’s BeiDou
Niu Tanqin
August 1: “The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end,” Al Jazeera’s website noted in a July 27 article commenting on Iran’s growing troubles with GPS signal disruptions and its move to explore adoption of China’s BeiDou system. The article stated that this shift sends a “clear signal.” According to Iran’s Hamshahri newspaper, the country is drafting a plan to migrate its positioning services, gradually shifting key sectors such as transportation navigation, agricultural monitoring, and the Internet of Things from GPS to China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.
Iran’s Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Ehsan Chit Saz, revealed this development in an interview with Hamshahri earlier this month. He stated, “The BeiDou system not only has an advanced architecture and high positioning accuracy—particularly with significant coverage advantages in Asia—but, crucially, its control lies entirely in China’s hands, rather than being subject to U.S. oversight.”
Al Jazeera noted that attacks by the United States and Israel have exposed a new vulnerability in Iran: during the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in surrounding waters experienced repeated GPS signal disruptions. The Israeli military’s assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists and senior commanders also raised concerns about infiltration of telecommunications systems and the use of mobile phones to track individuals’ locations. The article concluded that Western platforms are no longer trusted as mere channels of communication but are increasingly seen as tools in a broader digital intelligence war.
In addition, according to Hamshahri, GPS in the country has remained unstable since the Iran-Israel conflict. Due to security concerns, Iran’s domestic systems have at times deliberately implemented signal jamming. In the interview, Chit Saz admitted that technical data shows these measures have not effectively improved national security; instead, they have harmed millions of internet users and thousands of businesses. “It is precisely these internal disruptions that have prompted us to seek alternatives like BeiDou,” Chit Saz said.
According to a July 27 report by Iran’s Student News Agency, domestic tech companies in Iran are working to enable multi-system hybrid positioning through software upgrades. When one system is disrupted, devices can switch to others to maintain accurate positioning. The BeiDou system is emerging as a reliable alternative for like-minded countries, with many newer smartphones—particularly Chinese brands—already fully compatible with it. The report noted that turning to systems like BeiDou and strengthening domestic infrastructure is not a matter of choice, but a necessary condition for ensuring sustainable security and safeguarding the well-being of citizens.
According to the 2025 White Paper on the Development of China’s Satellite Navigation and Positioning Services Industry, BeiDou, as a core global satellite navigation system recognized by the United Nations, has signed cooperation agreements with Russia, Pakistan, the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, and others. It has been fully integrated into the standard systems of 11 international organizations in fields such as civil aviation, maritime affairs, and mobile communications, steadily expanding its international network of partners. BeiDou products have been exported to over 140 countries and regions, with CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) built in more than 30 African countries—including Nigeria and Tunisia—providing high-precision positioning services for local land surveying, water management, transportation, agriculture, forestry, mining, vehicle management, and meteorological monitoring.
At the same time, BeiDou’s international cooperation and exchange efforts are continuing to deepen. In addition to strengthening collaboration with Russia in satellite navigation, China has also signed bilateral agreements with South Africa and Nigeria on cooperation in the application of the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System.
Previously, some foreign media claimed that the BeiDou system is challenging the global dominance of the U.S. GPS system. In response, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that China’s scientific and technological innovation and industrial development are never aimed at any particular country. “China’s BeiDou is also the world’s BeiDou,” she said. “We will continue to uphold openness and cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, and work with other countries to ensure that more advanced scientific and technological achievements serve the people and benefit all of humanity.”
(Niu Tanqin is a Chinese political commentator. Courtesy: The China Academy, an intellectual content network dedicated to helping global audiences understand the key dynamics that are driving how China sees the world, from expert voices in China.)
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Trump and China in Brazil
Lallan Schoenstein
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose a new 50% tariff on all Brazilian products starting on Aug. 1. According to a July 17 New York Times Op Ed, Trump sent a bellicose letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declaring that the tariff is retaliation for the criminal prosecution of ultra right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, who attempted to hold onto power after losing the 2022 election.
New York Times Opinion Editor Lydia Polgreen writes that a much more consequential document had been signed just days earlier. Brazilian and Chinese companies have signed an agreement to begin building a roughly 2,800-mile railroad line that would connect Brazil’s Atlantic coast to a Chinese-built deepwater port on Peru’s Pacific coast.
Such phenomenal infrastructure could transform much of South America’s economy. It would facilitate the distribution of goods and enable greater mobility of people between Latin America and Asia.
‘America First’ and Panama Canal
Shipping problems caused by the U.S. domination of the Panama Canal would be significantly eased. As part of Trump’s bullying “America First” program, BlackRock (the largest U.S. shadow bank) purchased two key Panama Canal ports, Balboa and Cristóbal, located at both ends of the canal. Another issue is the logistics of the waterway passage, which opened in 1914. It was designed before the era of mega-container ships and supertankers.
Polgreen says about the difference between the threat of U.S. tariffs and China’s agreement:
It was a neat illustration of the contrasting approaches China and the United States have taken to their growing rivalry. China offers countries help building a new rail line; Trump bullies them and meddles in their politics.
Brazil, a huge country, bigger than the contiguous U.S., has a growing population, the seventh largest population in the world, and it has enormous resources. It looks forward to a role in building a world economy free from U.S. economic and military domination. To that end, Brazil, along with China, was a founding member of the BRICS, an intergovernmental organization that is currently comprised of ten countries, including Russia and Iran. In July, Brazil hosted the BRICS summit meeting.
Brazil’s collaboration with China has been flourishing. President Lula traveled to Beijing in May for his third bilateral meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping, since returning to the presidency in 2023, declaring that “our relationship with China will be indestructible.”
(Courtesy: Struggle-La Lucha, a US based socialist publication.)
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Iran Confronts Europe’s Trigger Mechanism–with Eurasian Allies at its Side
Vali Kaleji
On 22 July, Tehran hosted a high-level trilateral summit with senior officials from Russia and China to coordinate nuclear and sanctions strategies ahead of Iran’s scheduled negotiations with the European Troika in Istanbul today.
All three delegations reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining close coordination on the nuclear file and pledged to expand consultations aimed at countering western policies, particularly U.S.-led sanctions.
The trilateral meeting followed a sharp escalation in nuclear tensions. Just last month, the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, prompting Tehran to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While agency inspectors have since exited the country, Iran’s permanent mission in Vienna continues to liaise with the IAEA.
Western threats and the trigger mechanism
France, Germany, and the UK (also known as the European 3, or E3)—resentful over their exclusion from indirect U.S.—Iran talks—have begun circling the “trigger mechanism” embedded in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot was the first to signal the shift, warning the UN Security Council in late April that Paris would “not hesitate for a single second” to restore pre-2015 UN sanctions if European interests were perceived to be under threat.
The trigger mechanism is widely seen as a lever for the European Troika to return to the negotiating table with Iran. If the trigger mechanism is implemented, all of the six sanctions resolutions of the Security Council against Iran before 2015 (resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, and 1929) will return in one place, which will be a great shock to Iran’s economy.
The E3’s resolve has only intensified since Iranian nuclear sites were struck. On 15 July, Barrot issued a fresh warning that unless Tehran offered a “firm, tangible, and verifiable commitment,” Europe would reimpose sanctions “by the end of August at the latest.” That same day, the E3’s UN envoys convened at Germany’s UN Mission to coordinate positions. The matter also came up in a phone call on 14 July between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of the three countries, according to two U.S. officials.
Michael Waltz, the U.S. nominee for UN ambassador, declared during his Senate hearing that activating the snapback was “one of his priorities,” and expressed confidence that Britain, France, and Germany would fall in line. Echoing this view, Israeli officials have pressed European powers to trigger sanctions as soon as possible.
In addition, in a phone call with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on 18 July, the E3 foreign ministers and the EU’s top diplomat warned Tehran they are prepared to trigger the UN “snapback” mechanism—reimposing international sanctions—if Tehran fails to make concrete progress on reviving the nuclear deal by the end of summer.
What has emerged is a trilateral western consensus—Washington, the E3, and Tel Aviv—intent on cornering Iran before key provisions of the JCPOA expire on 18 October 2025. After that date, if Iran violates the JCPOA, the UN will no longer have the ability to automatically reimpose sanctions. Any reimposition would require a new Security Council resolution, which could be subject to a veto by any of the five permanent members, including both China and Russia.
With the UN Security Council process requiring 30 days, any move to initiate the trigger mechanism must come by late August to allow sanctions to snap back by September’s end.
Iran’s legal rejection and allied leverage
Tehran has rejected the legality of the mechanism outright. Araghchi, in response to French Foreign Minister Barrot’s threat to activate the trigger mechanism, said, “From our perspective, this action would be equivalent to a military attack.”
In a strongly worded 20 July letter to the UN Secretary-General and Security Council president, Foreign Minister Araghchi described the E3’s threats as “legally baseless, morally flawed, and politically dangerous.” He accused the European powers of violating both the JCPOA and Resolution 2231, citing their military and political complicity in U.S.—Israeli aggression as grounds for disqualification from participation in the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement.
Speaking earlier this week, the Iranian top diplomat warned:
If the EU “wants to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely [any] moral and legal ground.”
Iran’s strategic response is unfolding on several fronts. The 22 July meeting with Russia and China was a clear bid to shore up nuclear diplomacy through a multipolar axis. Both Moscow and Beijing reaffirmed their rejection of unilateral sanctions and backed Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy.
While neither country has signaled a withdrawal from the JCPOA, Iranian officials have floated the possibility that if the U.S. and Europe fully abandon the deal, there will be no legal basis left for its enforcement. Ahmad Bakhshish Ardestani, a senior member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, stated that if Russia and China were to exit the JCPOA, “there will be practically nothing left… that would prompt the Europeans to activate this mechanism.”
Snapback diplomacy and nuclear brinkmanship
While diplomatic coordination continues, Europe has privately signaled a potential softening. According to a post on X by Wall Street Journal reporter Laurence Norman:
During the call with Araghchi, [EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja] Kallas offered an extension of the snapback deadline under the nuclear deal, provided Iran resume cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and place specific limits on its enriched uranium stockpile.
Tehran has yet to confirm the offer, and former Iranian diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi dismissed the utility of such a delay, arguing that “the passage of time is not in Iran’s favor.”
There is one drastic option that remains on the table: Iranian officials have hinted that if the trigger mechanism is activated, Tehran may withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) altogether—as did North Korea in 2003 when its nuclear file became highly politicized and western actors became “aggressive” and “intrusive” in their demands.
On 11 June, Iranian UN envoy Amir Saeed Irvani warned the UN Security Council that such a step was under active consideration. A withdrawal would end all IAEA oversight and intensify Tehran’s policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Countdown to confrontation
The Istanbul meeting on Friday was held at the level of deputy foreign ministers from Iran, the UK, France, and Germany.
Following the meeting, Iran, the European troika, and the European Union agreed to continue negotiations on sanctions relief and Iran’s nuclear file.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, said discussions were “serious, frank, and detailed,” covering recent developments and key disagreements, including criticism of Europe’s stance on the recent Israeli aggression.
He noted that both sides presented specific proposals and agreed to hold further consultations.
The months leading to October 2025 are shaping up to be decisive. The E3, backed by Washington and the occupation state, seeks to constrain the Islamic Republic before the JCPOA’s core clauses expire. Tehran, in turn, is moving to neutralize the threat through diplomacy, deterrence, and defiance.
Whether the trigger is pulled or defused will hinge on what unfolds in Istanbul—and in the rooms where Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing now speak with one voice.
[Vali Kaleji is based in Tehran, Iran, holds a Ph.D. in Regional Studies, Central Asia and Caucasian Studies. He has published numerous analytical articles on Eurasian issues and Iran’ foreign policy for several publications. Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.]
