Lifting of sanctions to pave Iran’s path to SCO

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will consider Iran's membership request right after the UN Security Council lifts sanctions from Iran, the SCO Secretary General, Dmitry Mezentsev, said in an interview with the Izvestia daily.

"In the first stage of the SCO formation it prescribed rules specifying clearly that a country under UN sanctions can't get full membership. The organization wishes success to Iran in the finalization of efforts related to the nuclear program so that the essential legal procedures leading up to the lifting of sanctions are implemented as soon as possible. I believe the SCO will take up Iran's request for the status of a full member immediately after that," RIA Novosti cited him as saying.

Mezentsev also described the interaction between the SCO and Iran over the past two or three years and the interest from the Iranian side as "the basis for a new quality and depth of the cooperation between the country and the union."

An expert of the Center for Central Asian and Caucasus Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the RAS, Stanislav Pritchin, said in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza that both Iran and SCO have an interest in mutual cooperation, "but there was a problem that no one wanted to aggravate relations and the existence of sanctions was a barrier to the republic's membership in the organization".

"Now there is no such a problem, nor are there legal or political barriers. I think that there will be no controversy due to the fact that the sanctions are lifted, the international community has no complaints against Iran. Moreover, economic difficulties, which could stand in the way of cooperation with Iran, will decrease, because Iran's connection to SWIFT reduces the risk. It also helps to return Iran to the markets of Central Asia and South Asia," he said.

The Director General of the Institute for Caspian Cooperation, Sergey Mikheyev, expressed the view that "it means that the sides have a certain interest in cooperation if such statements are made on the official level." "The result depends on the projects in which Iran will participate. Only time will tell us what projects Iran will choose, it is difficult to talk about it now," the expert noted.

He added that "it is pointless to talk about the relations between the SCO and Iran, because Iran has bilateral relations with different SCO member states. There are no relations with the SCO as a subject of international political process. The SCO is an organization with some potential, but not a single entity of the international process. So what kind of relationship does Iran have with the SCO? It wants to join it, that's all," Sergey Mikheyev concluded.