Reports from Iran indicate the regime is handing over some Iranian islands to China in an unpatriotic 25–year agreement. This is a desperate move by a regime which is reaching its end and trying to hold its grasp on power at any cost.
The regime is handing the Kish island to China in exchange for military, regional and international support. Particularly, the mullahs’ regime fears the upcoming decision of the United Nations Security Council over an extension of the arms embargo on the regime.
Meanwhile, the regime has not disclosed the details of this agreement, because it fears that this unpatriotic agreement could trigger protests by the Iranian people, who are grappling with poverty and the COVID-19 crisis while the regime auctions their wealth, and the regime is unable to control a possible uprising. The regime has never stopped its relations with China. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the regime was the only government that continued its flights from and to China. The Mahan Air airline, which is affiliated to the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), continued transferring Chinese passengers, prioritizing economic goals over the Iranian people’s lives. There were numerous protests to this action. Therefore, fearing an uprising, the regime was forced to stop its flights or at least pretend it had for a very short period of time.
The Oil Price website, in an article on July 6, 2020, wrote: “Last week, the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] agreed to the extension of the existing deal to include new military elements that were proposed by the same senior figures in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the intelligence services that proposed the original deal, and this will involve complete aerial and naval military co-operation between Iran and China, with Russia also taking a key role.”
According to Oil Price: “Part of the new military co-operation includes an exchange of personnel between Iran and China and Russia, with up to 110 senior Iranian IRGC men going for training every year in Beijing and Moscow and 110 Chinese and Russians going to Tehran for their training.”
In addition, the petroleum-economist in September 2013 wrote: “Among other benefits, Chinese companies will be given the first refusal to bid on any new, stalled or uncompleted oil and gas field developments. Chinese firms will also have the first refusal of opportunities to become involved with any and all petchems projects in Iran, including the provision of technology, systems, process ingredients, and personnel required to complete such projects.”
In exchange the regime has agreed to let China “buy any and all oil, gas, and petchems products at a minimum guaranteed discount of 12 per cent to the six-month rolling mean average price of comparable benchmark products, plus another 6 to 8 per cent of that metric for risk-adjusted compensation. Additionally, China will be granted the right to delay payment for up to two years and, significantly, it will be able to pay in soft currencies that it has accrued from doing business in Africa and the Former Soviet Union states.”
This disgraceful agreement has also increased the regime’s infighting. Each faction tries to blame the other side, to avoid the public hatred. Mohammad Hasan Asafari, a Member of Parliament, on July 5 said: “Dr. [Mohammad Javad] Zarif [the regime’s Foreign Minister] just said that they are signing a 25-year contract with the Chinese. Yet, the Majlis [parliament] is not aware of this. There have been a lot of rumors about this on social media and among people. These rumors about handing Kish Island over to China will result in people’s dissatisfaction.”
Facing a restive society and an unprecedented international isolation due to its malign activities, the regime has been auctioning Iran within the last few years. In 2019, they auctioned Iran’s historical share of the Caspian Sea to Russia. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) at that time wrote: “Undermining the Iranian nation’s national interests, including one trillion dollars in damages from the unpatriotic war with Iraq, the destruction of the environment, the drying up of the nation’s water reserves, the plunder of the Iranian people’s wealth and its squander on exporting terrorism, warmongering, and nuclear and missile programs, are all familiar devices of the mullahs’ regime, which has declared safeguarding the totalitarian rule of the vali-e faqih (absolute clerical ruler) as the absolute imperative. Now, it is the turn of the Caspian Sea, one of Iran’s greatest national treasures, which the anti-Iranian mullahs have given away in a bid to preserve their security and disgraceful rule.”
As Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, NCRI President, had said: “For Khomeini, Khamenei and Rouhani, neither water, nor the land, nor the culture, nor the lives, nor the wealth of the Iranian people have any value. Only one thing matters: Preserving the rule of the mullahs, which Khomeini described as the ‘absolute imperative,’ and for which one can abrogate Islamic edicts, and first and foremost give away the land and water of Iran and its people and massacre its valiant children in the prisons. Indeed, what could an invader do that the mullahs have not done to Iran and the Iranian people. The mullahs are among the worst in Iran’s history.”
