China and other key world powers, except the US, have keen national interests at stake as far as Teheran is concerned
The United States has been drumming up efforts for a fresh round of UN sanctions against Iran, with its European allies Britain, France and Germany standing steadfast, and China and Russia wavering on the issue.
The five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany have formed a key multilateral mechanism (P5 plus one) that can determine the fate of Iran's dispute with the international community over its nuclear program.
Any kind of sanctions, or war, will likely entail risks for China, which has increasingly depended on the outside world for its economic development.
A war by the US or Israel against Teheran, which is likely to set the oil-rich Gulf ablaze, will cut down world energy supplies by 60 percent, fuel a rise in oil prices and plunge the global economy into a fresh crisis.
Given that a fast-growing China has become increasingly dependent on world energy supplies, it is thus in Beijing's strategic interests to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
It is China's top diplomatic priority to ease confrontation and defuse conflicts in a bid to prevent tensions over Iran's nuclear issue from escalating into a military confrontation.
That can explain why China has remained cautious on the issue and made unremitting efforts to push for its settlement in a peaceful and diplomatic manner.
Any new sanctions on Iran will escalate the conflict and may likely lead to war.
With the US still bogged down by its two battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the global economy struggling to rise from the financial crisis, there is no reason for the whole world to pay the bill again for a third US war in the Middle East region.
All major world powers except the US have huge strategic, energy related and economic interests in Iran.
Iran serves as Russia's buffer in the south given that an independent and US-antagonistic Iran is in Moscow's interest in the context of the US-led eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Russia's security in its mostly Muslim-populated Caucasus region and Chechnya is closely related with Iran. Moscow has also benefited from its cooperation with Iran on nuclear power construction and its export of airplanes, missiles and other sophisticated weapons to Teheran.
In addition, a $630 million-worth Russian investment in Iran's South Pars gas field will also suffer in case new UN sanctions come into force.
The EU too cannot ignore Iran's economic and strategic importance to itself. Some 80 percent of the bloc's oil consumption depends on the Gulf.
Since 1992, Germany, France, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands have successively joined in to exploit Iran's oil and gas fields.
Iran remains the EU's sixth largest energy supplier, with energy imports taking up 80 percent of the bloc's total import volume from the oil-abundant Gulf nation.
The EU has also benefited from Teheran's decision in December 2006 to gradually replace the dollar with the euro in its central bank deposits and use the euro as the main settlement currency for its oil trade.
A new round of sanctions on Iran will inflict enormous economic losses on not only Iran, but also on the EU, Russia and China.
As the pivotal member of the five-plus-one mechanism, the US should take into account the damage the new sanctions on Iran will possibly cause to other parties.
The US has been trying to exert pressure on China to stand behind it in its run-up to fresh sanctions against Teheran, saying all the five members had agreed to sanctions.
Britain, France and Germany have at most made a political gesture of support to their ally and it is expected the three European countries will conduct heated debates about its fineprint if such sanctions have to be renewed.
Russia has never yielded its heavy interest in Iran, and what it has done is possibly use Iran's nuclear issue as a political chip to force the US into some concessions on Washington's deployment of the long-controversial missile defense shield in Europe.
As a responsible power that has long advocated the settlement of international disputes through diplomatic means, China should be well prepared to combat the risks of a possible sanction to protect its own interests.
It is the common responsibility of all countries to stop nuclear proliferation. The international community has reasons to demand Iran remove the veil on its nuclear program to prevent weaponization of Teheran's nuclear technology.
However, the majority of countries remain reluctant to either become a foe of Iran or join the US' isolation of the nation.
The core of Iran's nuclear issue is the decades-long antagonism between it and the US. The US Bush administration labeled Iran as a part of the "axis of evil" during its eight-year reign and pushed for the adoption of three rounds of UN sanctions against the country, which pushed US-Iran ties to the brink of war.
Since it took office, the US Obama administration has made efforts toward undoing its past unilateralism and improving ties with the Islamic country, including the policy of "unconditional engagement" with Teheran. However, the Obama administration cannot completely break away from the US' long-held strategy as a superpower and cannot accept peaceful coexistence with the Iranian regime.
As a permanent UN Security Council member, China holds an important say in Iran's nuclear issue. It enjoys good relations both with the US and Iran and thus does not want to offend either party.
The US regards China's backing as a measure of Beijing's obligation as a responsible country while Iran sees China's resistance to UN sanctions as the test of long-praised good relations between the two countries.
China should, together with other members of the international community, come up with a viable formula to achieve a US-Iran compromise on the issue.
The author was China's ambassador to Iran from 1991 to 1995.
(China Daily 05/14/2010 page8)