Israeli-Iranian Rivalry from the Perspective of Sino-Israeli and Indian-Israeli Relations

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Abstract

The article takes a look at how Israeli-Iranian rivalry affected the development of Sino-Israeli and Indian-Israeli relations. China characterizes its relations with Iran as strategic cooperation while India maintains a high level of cooperation with the Islamic Republic. What is more, Iran is one of major trade partners of China and India in the region. The author analyses the efforts Tel-Aviv took to try to influence China’s and India’s approach towards Teheran and make it more favorable for its interests. In the case of China, Israel was interested in stopping flow of Chinese weapons to Iran as well as putting an end to China’s support to Iran’s nuclear program. As for India, Israel in the 2000s was concerned that some of its military technologies supplied to India might be leaked to Iran. Given this, Israel tried to dissuade China’s and India’s from advancing ties with Teheran.

The analysis showed that Israel’s efforts turned out to be fruitless. China signed new strategic agreement with Iran in 2021 and cooperates with Iran on the military and intelligence levels. Likewise, India didn’t change its stance towards Iran due to of Israel’s efforts. Nevertheless, China’s trade relations with Iran decreased as a result of Beijing deepening ties with Arab states, namely Gulf states. This led to decline in China’s oil imports from Iran. The same process can be witnessed in Indian-Iranian relations, where imports from Iran sharply decreased as a result of Trump Administration’s anti-Iranian policy.

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Arman A. Mikaelian

MGIMO-University

Author for correspondence.
Email: asaf-today@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9922-245X

PhD (History), Department of Middle East Languages, MGIMO University

Russian Federation, Moscow

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