SCO summit in Dushanbe
The Iranian parliament has approved a bill on the country’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). On November 27, the report of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission on the draft law on the accession of the Government of Iran to the SCO was considered at an open session of the parliament. Representatives of the Islamic Council approved the entry into the SCO by a majority vote. 205 deputies voted for the adoption of the bill.
Tehran received observer status at the SCO back in 2005, after which it applied for full membership in 2008. Until 2015, Iran could not be accessed to the organisation because of the international sanctions applied against Tehran. According to the rules of the SCO, a country under the sanctions of the UN Security Council cannot become its member. The sanctions were lifted in 2015 when Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program.
However, when sanctions ceased to be an obstacle to Iran’s admission to the organization, Tajikistan blocked Tehran’s application. Despite the fact that Dushanbe had close bilateral relations with Tehran, Tajikistan accused Tehran of supporting the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and indirectly participating in the organization of terrorist acts committed back in the late 1990s on the territory of the country. Such Dushanbe’s decision rather had deep financial and geopolitical factors, such as the growing influence of Iran’s long—time adversary, Saudi Arabia, on Tajikistan’s policy, and a decrease in trade turnover between the countries.
A few years later, the conflict was resolved. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi flew to Dushanbe to attend the SCO anniversary summit in 2021, where the SCO leaders approved the admission of Iran as a full member of the organization.
On September 15, 2022, Iran signed a memorandum of commitments in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Today, Iran has to recognize the documents that have been approved since the beginning of the organization’s creation.
“The future mandatory documents of the organization will also be considered by the Parliament in accordance with the constitution,” said the spokesman for the National Security Commission of the Iranian Parliament.
The SCO is an international organization founded on June 15, 2001, by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan joined the SCO in 2005. The SCO observer countries are Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, and the partner countries are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka. In September 2021, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were also granted the status of partners to the organisation. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey pursues the goal of becoming a member of the SCO. Turkey was invited by Uzbekistan as a special guest in 2021. In 2022, Belarus officially applied to join the SCO as a full member.
Amid the global shifts that are taking place in the modern system of international relations, the SCO is increasingly becoming a center of attraction for all forces in Asia seeking to put an end to the dominance of the West in this region.
