China using Iran to make cold war against U.S.

With Iranians marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic with another round of protests, it is time for China to align its Iran policy with the long-term interests of the Iranian people. Yet, sadly, as a rising superpower China is treating Iran as a bargaining chip in a great game against the United States.

In recent weeks, China's support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has assumed a decidedly anti-American tone. Echoing Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, the People's Daily, the chief organ of the Chinese Communist Party, attributed the mass protests against Iran's rigged presidential elections as "an instance of naked political scheming" by the United States. Coming in the aftermath of its clash with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Google over censorship and human rights, China blamed the unrest in Iran on "online warfare launched by America via YouTube and Twitter." In this paranoid reading, the United States had stirred up millions of Iranians by sowing "discord between the followers of conservative and reformist factions."

China's assertion that American media are instruments, and the Iranian people stooges, of the United States distorts reality. Such a perspective on Iran, if not corrected, can harm China's relations with the United States and the Iranian people. While China may score political points with Iran's fundamentalists by fueling the myth of the Great Satan, such an Iran policy is not only an affront to President Barack Obama and the American people but an insult to millions of Iranians protesting a bankrupt theocracy founded on fraud, violence, rape and murder.

Although China has officially condemned U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as interference in its internal affairs, it does not see its overt support for Ahmadinejad's coup as interference in Iran's domestic affairs. Yet it is China — not the United States — that is harming Iranians by arming Ahmadinejad and his Basij militia with anti-riot gear and vehicles. China is silent about violations of the Iranian people's civil and human rights and refuses to condemn the rape and murder of political prisoners in Kahrizak prison, a crime that even Iran's supreme leader has blamed on his own prison officials, not the United States. Further, it is China whose support for Ahmadinejad's nuclear program at the United Nations encourages Ahmadinejad's belligerent foreign policy, threatens the peace and security of the Middle East, and exposes millions to untold suffering caused by the threat of sanctions and war.