Iran is Expected Sign Agreement to Join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Upcoming Summit

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kansans announced on September 12, 2022 that Iran will sign an agreement to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at its next summit.

“The process of Iran’s admission [to the organization] is coming to an end. At the upcoming meeting of the SCO, an agreement will be officially signed on Iran’s obligations to obtain the status of a member of the organization,” Kanaani declared.

According to the foreign ministry, “Iran’s membership in the organization is expedient and mutually beneficial.”

“Iran, as an important country in the region, thanks to its energy resources, great economic potential and location along the route of the North-South transport corridor, has the potential to benefit the SCO,” Kanaani added.

Russian-state media provided an outline of what the SCO does and who are its principal members:

The SCO is an international organization that was founded in 2001, whose members are India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia hold the status of observers, while Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey are partner countries.

The upcoming SCO summit will take place from September 15-16 in Uzbekistan.

The SCO is generally viewed as a broader geopolitical bloc that serves as a de facto counter to the Western political order. BLP previously reported on Saudi Arabia potentially joining this bloc. Saudi Arabia is currently trying to mend relations with Iran, its principal geopolitical rival in the Middle East.

With Iran joining this grouping, the SCO is quickly accelerating as a Eurasian geopolitical structure that will check Western hegemony across the Eurasian landmass. The geopolitical dynamics of the unipolar era of the 1990s are slowly withering away before our very eyes. Will Western elites even grasp this?

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