Article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/iran-signs-memorandum-join-shanghai-cooperation-organisation
On September 15th, president Ebrahim Raisi of Iran met with the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) at their summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. There, the president signed a memorandum to join the SCO as a full member. This membership will help Iran with both the economic side, as well as protection side of future conflicts. The president went on to threaten that this will also show that US sanctions are not as permanent, and as effective as the US had thought.
Iran is not the only one to express interest in joining the massive intergovernmental organisation. Countries such as Belarus, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are also demonstrating immense interest in becoming partners. This does not include the pre-existing dialogue partners that the SCO has ties with, which would be countries such as Cambodia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. I suspect that this action from Iran is purely because of existing sanctions that the US has placed. It seems non-coincidental that this happens after discussions between the US and Iran of reviving a pre-existing nuclear pact led to a dead end. Iran ended the discussion with a compromise of removing sanctions to revive the pact. Iran joining the SCO shows that countries will continue to join the SCO, and as they do, the power and governance that the US has grows slightly smaller.
In class we discussed the differences between IGOs and NGOs, as well as their impact on countries that house them. The SCO is a well known IGO, and primarily serves to oppose western influence on the Eastern side of the world. To me, finding that more and more countries are developing ties with these IGOs that are developed to oppose another existing IGOs or NGOs is an important aspect at showing how certain governments are feeling about each other. In Iran’s case, joining can help their economy, but the case could be different for others, and seeing which particular governments join particular organisations can help us predict what may develop in the future, as stated earlier.