Political and Security Challenges of China's Strategy for Iran

Belt- Road Initiative as China’s foreign policy great strategy was proposed in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, and is known as China’s foreign policy spearhead. Since it includes many regional countries, the initiative has made its relevant actors design policies for optimizing its benefits and reducing its challenges. The author tries to define possible challenges of the Belt – Road Initiative for Iran. Therefore she tries to answer the following question: How the challenges of the Belt – Road Initiative are assessed? The challenges are addressed through two prisms: 1. negligence to Iran’s potentialities (as the factors of its effectiveness reduction); 2. foreign threats (as the factors that influence on Iran).
The present literature argues that although China always claims prosperity and economic integration as the goals of its Belt and Road Initiative, its approach is practically reflecting political and security consequences. Neorealism theory is used as the theoretical framework in this article.