Лев и дракон: новый этап китайско-иранского стратегического партнёрства

Worth noting that the Iranians have long viewed Pakistan - a historically strong and close ally of Saudi Arabia - with suspicion, and Islamabad is concerned about the development of the Chabahar port as a possible alternative to its own China-funded project, Gwadar [34]. CPEC is a major development project aimed at building energy, industrial and communications infrastructure throughout Pakistan, with the port of Gwadar as a pillar. Since China intends to showcase CPEC as the earliest and most successful of the six BRI corridors, CPEC has been called the “flagship project”, “pilot project”, and “icon” of the BRI [28]. Pakistan hoped the projects, if completed, would generate enough revenue to pay off China's US $ 60 billion debt. To this end, Islamabad is laying a land corridor - a series of railways and highways - to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries that can benefit from faster trade routes to and from China. This land route from Gwadar, a city on the coast of the Arabian Sea, to China's western Xinjiang Province would be much faster than shipping goods by sea [46].

Iran's participation in the CPEC provides more opportunities for establishing and forging bilateral relations with Pakistan, where cross-border skirmishes on the Sistan-Baluchestan and Balochistan border, as well as unit-pricing issues over the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline have been the subject of disputes between the two states [50]. China will finance a long-stalled pipeline that will connect Iran and Pakistan, supplying natural gas from first to last and covering the 485-mile stretch of the so-called "peace pipeline" that runs from the coastal city of Asalue on the Persian Gulf to the southern border of Balochistan between Pakistan and Iran [35].15 Connecting the pipeline to the BRI will allow China to receive Iranian gas not only by sea on its eastern coast, but also in its landlocked, troubled northwestern province of Xinjiang. The joining of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline to the CPEC will increase Iran's importance to the success of China's Eurasian infrastructure game, and the development of the Chabahar port and the Iran-Oman-India undersea pipeline as a potentially alternative energy corridor from Asia to Europe will provide Iran with a key role in the transatlantic community's efforts to strengthening relations with India as opposed to China's rise [63].

To balance India's role in Chabahar and to develop trade and commerce in the region, in May 2019, Iran proposed to connect Chabahar with the Pakistani port of Gwadar with its railway system, from Iran to the Northern Corridor, through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, as well as through Azerbaijan, Russia and through Turkey [57]. Iran's proposals were met in Pakistan, as the two countries were already discussing a new ferry service that would `link` ports in Gwadar and Karachi with Iranian ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas [53].

While China attaches equal importance to its relations with states such as Saudi Arabia, an arrangement on the CPEC that would allow Iran to benefit economically and could simultaneously challenge the regional and ideological hegemony of Saudi Arabia, serves Tehran’s interest [50]. It is notable here that Pakistan has refrained from fully engaging with the Saudi Arabian Islamic Counter-Terrorism Alliance, which is believed to be partly directed against Iran, while the Pakistani parliament has rejected Saudi Arabia's request for military support in the Yemen war. Anyway, Saudi Arabia and Iran had little chance of a successful mediation, and the kingdom hopes that tougher U.S. policy toward Iran will broaden the window of opportunity in the battle against Iran [63].