An Assessment of the Comprehensive 25-Year Iran-China Cooperation Plan from the Perspective of Critical Geopolitics

The advent of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the redefinition of geopolitical codes led to the production of new discourses whose floating sign consisted of Iran's confrontation with the West’s geopolitical field. In order to produce a counter-discourse against the United States, Iran seeks a compensatory mechanism to manage the effects of sanctions on its economy, resulting in a 25-year Iran-China strategic plan. From the perspective of critical geopolitics and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, this study has reviewed the text of the 25-Year Iran-China Cooperation Plan in order to identify and analyze its geopolitical propositions and trends. Accordingly, the text was examined in three scales: agents, actions, and context. At the agents’ scale, China has been identified as the guarantor of security. Findings from this critical analysis showed that the floating sign in the text was to ensure Iran's geo-economic security against US sanctions. The meaning of the second identified reference, or geopolitical threatening reference, is the United States and Western Europe (Western geopolitical field). Iran seeks to create a geopolitical society discourse based on the text of a 25-year plan by identifying examples of threats against itself and China. In terms of actions, China seeks a strategic partnership with Iran by taking two steps to raise the issue of Iran on the non-security agenda and to distance itself and impose its position. In the third scale, the impact of the threat-generating actor on the context (25-year plan) was first examined, during which the United States seeks to minimize Iran's achievements by attaching the 25-year plan into Iran's nuclear program.