One week after Chinese President Xi Jinping's historic visit to post-sanctions Iran, where the two countries signed major trade agreements including bringing Iran fully into the emerging strategic New Economic Silk Road and Maritime Road blueprint, China launched a new maritime shipping route to Iran. Two days before that, the first freight train departed China for the Islamic Republic.
Anyone who has experienced the industriousness of the Chinese, once they define a major goal, will not be surprised. Still, it shows the strategic priority Beiing is giving to integrate Iran, a centuries-long ally of China going back to the ancient Silk Road, into its unfolding Eurasian economic space. Events to flesh out Iran's integration into the Eurasian One Belt, One Road are moving on both sides very rapidly. Clearly, at the next annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization annual meeting later this year, Teheran will also be invited to full membership status in that organization now that sanctions are lifted as well, firming a growing political and economic bond with the nations of Eurasia following years of sanctions and isolation.
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