What Does China Think About Iran’s Nuclear Program?

On March 14, vice foreign ministers from China, Iran, and Russia met in Beijing to “exchange views on the Iranian nuclear issue and other issues of mutual interest.” For the meeting, China’s Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu served as host to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov Sergey Alexeevich and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi.

The China-Iran-Russia trilateral came amid a volatile situation in the Middle East. The Trump administration has returned to its old policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, and on March 16 – two days after the Beijing meeting – U.S. military conducted airstrikes on Iran-backed rebels in Yemen. Trump warned that his government would hold Iran “fully accountable” for its support of the Houthis, who have been attacking international shipping lanes in retaliation for Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza.

“There are two ways Iran can be handled, militarily or you make a deal," Trump said during an interview on Fox News in early March. “I would prefer to make a deal, because I'm not looking to hurt Iran.” The U.S. president added that he had sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressing interest in negotiations over the nuclear issue.

But, Trump continued, whether diplomatically or militarily, “[W]e have to do something, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

A few days later, Khamenei rebuffed Trump’s offer of dialogue. “The insistence of some bullying governments to negotiate is not to solve problems, but to impose their own expectations… The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not accept their expectations,” he said during a government meeting on March 8. Although he didn’t specifically name Trump or the United States, the reference was clear.

Iran’s United Nations mission took a softer stance, noting in a statement posted to X that talks on the “militarization” of Iran’s nuclear program might be acceptable. That said, the statement continued, “Should the aim be the dismantlement of Iran's peaceful nuclear program to claim that what [former U.S. President] Obama failed to achieve has now been accomplished, such negotiations will never take place.”

Indeed, the specter of the Obama administration’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal – formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – looms large over any Iran-U.S. negotiations. The 2015 JCPOA saw Iran agree to foreswear nuclear weapons, with regular inspections to ensure compliance, in exchange for sanctions relief.

During his first term in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, instead embracing a “maximum pressure” approach that relied heavily on sanctions. Back in office, Trump has returned to his policy of heavy sanctions coupled with military threats.

Today, however, Iran is less well positioned to weather the storm. The Iranian regime is facing arguably its biggest challenge since attaining power, with mass discontent over inflation and other economic woes coupled with extreme repression on daily life. Added to the volatile mix is the fact that Khamenei, 85, does not have a clearly established successor despite increasingly ill health. Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign policy has faced numerous setbacks in the past year, from the fall of the Iran-backed Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria to Israel’s bombing of Hezbollah in Lebanon and strikes on Iran itself.

With all those factors combined, it’s the “worst of times” for the Iranian regime, Dr. Abbas Milani, the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, told journalists at an event in January.

Faced with increasing pressure at home and abroad, Iran’s response has been two-fold. First, Tehran is upping its threats to pursue a nuclear weapon – including increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium by 50 percent from November 2024 to February 2025, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Second, it is bolstering cooperation with its remaining partners, including China and Russia.

That’s where the recent trilateral meeting on “the Iranian nuclear issue” came in. While it was officially a meeting between vice foreign ministers, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with the Iranian and Russian delegations to present “China’s five-point proposal on the Iranian nuclear issue.” The three countries also issued a joint statement, another sign of the importance of the meeting.

On the surface, then, the meeting could be read as a sign of the further development of the “authoritarian axis” between China, Iran, and Russia. However, the diplomacy on display actually demonstrated clear limits on China’s support for Iran.

First, the three countries called for “terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions” – effectively a rebuke of Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach, although the United States was not directly mentioned. “Political and diplomatic engagement and dialogue based on the principle of mutual respect remains the only viable and practical option in this regard,” the statement declared, calling on “relevant parties” to “abandon sanction, pressure, or threat of force.” 

Second, the statement was clear in its opposition to Iran gaining a nuclear weapon. All three countries “reiterated the importance of upholding the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)” – which effectively puts Iran outside the fold of legal nuclear weapons states – and “welcomed Iran’s reiteration that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes and not for development of nuclear weapons.” The statement went on to voice support for Iran’s nuclear power program, emphasizing “the need to fully respect Iran’s right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”

Essentially, then, the trilateral meeting echoed the social media post from Iran’s U.N. mission – talks are possible, but Iran will not give up its quest for nuclear energy. That also happens to echo China’s general position.

“China has historically supported Iran's right to civilian nuclear energy and opposed the use of sanctions in diplomacy, while at the same time supporting the framework of the JCPOA and the principle of non-proliferation,” William Figueroa, assistant professor of History of International Relations at University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told The Diplomat via email.

Milani, who is also a research fellow and codirector of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, said that Iran had been conducting “secret shuttle diplomacy” to try to convince China and Russia to back its nuclear program. “They will go for the bomb only if they get China and Russia to agree,” Milani said – and China’s assent looks extremely unlikely.

With that being the case, “Iran has the technical ability to make the bomb. It has made a political decision not to,” he concluded.

Beijing is clearly uncomfortable with the idea of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, which was made abundantly clear by the joint statement’s unambiguous rejection of that idea.

However, China is also uncomfortable with the sanctions that have become the United States’ go-to tool for addressing the issue. Beijing is seeking a way to return to dialogue, hopefully resulting in a re-endorsement of the basic framework of the JCPOA – that’s the third point of China’s “five–point peace plan.” But Beijing is not willing to offer Tehran much in the way of material support – such as extending a lifeline for its beleaguered economy –  vs rhetorical support.

“Fundamentally, China views the situation as a potential liability that inhibits its ability to invest in Iran, due to the risks inherent in openly doing business in the face of U.S. sanctions,” Figueroa continued. “They would very much like it to be resolved peacefully and to the satisfaction of all parties involved, but without the use of economic coercion or the total dismantling of Iran's nuclear program.”

To date, he added, sanctions and regional instability have limited Chinese investment and economic engagement in Iran, despite a much ballyhooed 25-year agreement reached in 2021.

Indeed, China’s main concern is to keep the issue from escalating, either from U.S. or Iranian action. Wang was very blunt on this point: “There are already enough problems in the Middle East,” he told the Iranian and Russian diplomats. “All parties should focus on the Palestine-Israel issue…. rather than creating new tensions or even crises.”