چکیده:
Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an observer member in 2005 and the year after applied for full membership. This application raised debates among SCO members, inside Iran and outside this organization in international politics. In the positive side, Iran's geostrategic importance and huge energy resources give impetus to SCO members. On the negative side, Iran’s challenge with the West, nuclear in particular, discourages SCO members to accept Iran at this juncture because they hesitate to pretend that they are standing against United States and the West. This article studies these debates in the theoretical framework of neo-realism and examines these events through historical analysis and according to their historical context. Considering the current international environment, membership of Iran in the SCO seems remote and very much depends, on the one hand on future progress of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear dossier, and on the other hand on relations between SCO members and the West.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Mousavi Esfandiar Khodaee Abstract Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an observer member in 2005 and the year after applied for full membership.
Keywords: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Iran, NuclearDossier, Russia, China, Central Asian States, USA, the West Associate Professor, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran (mamousavi@ut.
In the security aspect, SCO is not a military organization like NATO; in the economic cooperation it is not like the European Union with high level of integration to threaten the sovereignty of member states.
"Accession to the SCO where security and military issues matter most, will be at odds with the Iranian Constitution and certain policies of our foreign policy… permanent membership of Iran in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will cause problems and incompatibilities.
Gundzik, a Western analyst, warned about the threat of ‘China-Iran-Russia axis’ and wrote "Beijing's increasingly close ties with Moscow and Tehran will thwart Washington's foreign policy goal of expanding US security footholds in the Middle East, Central Asia and Asia… The SCO is becoming an increasingly powerful regional mutual security organization".
According to Mahmoud Vaezi, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic Research in Tehran, "Basically, under present global conditions, participation in regional cooperation processes is not only useful, but also necessary… It will be beneficial for Iran to be a member of SCO.
"In the eyes of China, Russia, and Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Iran’s full membership, despite its economic and security advantages, can drag SCO into the fight between Tehran and the West.