By Ali Asghar Beheshti
Iran’s limited gains from its membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are partly rooted in how the organization’s role and potential are understood. The key issue is not simply Iran’s level of participation or the number of agreements reached, but how effectively it defines and uses the opportunities created by SCO membership.
How the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Has Evolved
The SCO has evolved from a primarily security- and border-focused organization into a broader platform covering trade, energy, transportation, technology, and regional connectivity. As membership and interests have expanded, reaching comprehensive agreements has become more difficult. However, the organization’s gatherings provide a valuable platform for intensive diplomacy, allowing members to advance specific bilateral and multilateral projects alongside collective initiatives.
Why Iran Needs a More Strategic Approach to the SCO?
Treating the SCO only as a forum for collective decision-making can lead countries to overlook much of its potential. Large multilateral goals can often be broken down into smaller bilateral projects and pursued through targeted negotiations. Therefore, effective participation requires a clear agenda, specific projects, advance preparation, and measurable outcomes from each meeting rather than simply increasing the number of diplomatic encounters.
How SCO Summits Create Opportunities for Bilateral Cooperation?
The Bishkek summit illustrates how some members use SCO meetings to advance specific bilateral agendas. Uzbekistan used the summit to pursue cooperation with China on areas including economic relations, the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway, artificial intelligence, and security. Similarly, Russia used Putin’s meetings with leaders such as Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi to address concrete issues in defense, trade, energy, and Ukraine. These examples show that summit diplomacy can serve as part of a broader process that begins before the summit and continues after it.
How Iran Can Turn SCO Membership into Strategic Opportunities?
The SCO should not be assessed solely by its collective decisions or political convergence. Its growing diversity makes broad agreements more difficult, but also creates opportunities for targeted bilateral diplomacy and project-based cooperation. For Iran, the challenge is therefore not membership itself but how that membership is used. A clear, project-oriented agenda could transform Iran’s SCO participation from routine diplomatic engagement into a structured process for turning regional opportunities into concrete and implementable projects.
