Opportunities and Challenges of Iran's Economic Diplomacy in the Context of the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Agreement with China

Iran and China, two countries that are involved in structural conflicts with the international system, in a process based on convergence, have signed an agreement called "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement", which is basically aimed at geo-economic goals. This cooperation document can bring opportunities for Iran's economic diplomacy, and its implementation will be accompanied by challenges simultaneously. The main question of this is what opportunities and challenges does the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement bring to strengthen Iran's economic diplomacy? The hypothesis is that this agreement includes economic opportunities for Iran in the fields of facilitating communication and information infrastructure, expanding trade and investment, financial and banking cooperation, participating in the Belt and Road Initiative and reducing sanctions pressure. However, challenges such as different approaches and expectations from the agreement, inconsistency between the two countries in the theoretical and practical areas of policymaking, different business structures, sanctioning of the financial and banking convergence of the two countries, and the lack of Iranian economic and commercial diplomats are hindering Iran's economic diplomacy. The aim of the article is to identify and analyze the points of convergence and divergence between the economic diplomacy of Iran and China according to the 25-year agreement. Achieving this goal is pursued based on the descriptive-analytical method and relying on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of economic diplomacy. The result indicates that despite the openings for Iran's economic diplomacy in the light of the strategic agreement, it is also overshadowed by the challenges of influence. The most important challenge among these challenges is the heavy shadow of sanctions, which severely limits Iran's maneuverability in benefiting from the economic benefits of this agreement.