The rest of the world learned a different lesson from the fall of the Soviet Union than the United States did. A huge military drained the wealth out of a country. While we’ve spent the years since then growing our military spending, they’ve concentrated on economic growth. And they are succeeding.
As President Hasan Rouhani prepares to address the UN General Assembly in New York and the Trump administration and allies relentlessly lobby for the Iran nuclear deal to be decertified, Tehran is busy clinching deal after deal with Asians and Europeans.
For the Chinese government, Iran – and Pakistan – are so geopolitically important that they are treated as Home Affairs nations in East Asia (and not the Middle East, in the case of Iran), alongside Japan and Indonesia. Read more here.