Azerbaijan, Baku, October 17 / Trend , E.Ostapenko /
The chances that the persistent efforts of Iran to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be crowned with success are very low, Russian leading analyst on Iranian politics, Vladimir Yevseyev, said.
"Iran is in a strong political isolation. If to admit such organization to the SCO, this isolation will reflect on other states. So, admitting Iran to the SCO is absolutely unreal," Yevseyev, senior fellow at the Center for International Security at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations of Russian Academy of Sciences, told Trend by telephone from Moscow.
Together with Afghanistan, India, Mongolia and Pakistan, Iran has an observer status in the SCO - a regional international organization, founded in 2001. However, Iran's leadership has repeatedly expressed interest in membership to the organization, which includes six states - Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Recently, at the SCO summit in Beijing, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, the first deputy of Iranian President, said that Iran is interested in promoting its status in the SCO. Even last year, Iran submitted an application to the secretariat of the SCO's regarding its intention to become a full-right member of the organization.
A year later, Iran's chances are still low, since Iran's entrance to the blocks the two leading states in the SCO - China and Russia, said Yevseyev. Relations with Iran are complicated enough, and if Iran is admitted to the SCO, the organization will be forced to assume an external problem. The SCO does not want to assume such commitments, the expert said.
Iran's isolation is connected with its nuclear program, condemned by the international community. The UN Security Council adopted five resolutions, three of which are aimed at imposing sanctions against Iran, requiring it to give up uranium enrichment, and two resolutions containing warnings.
The U.S. and other Western countries accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons for military purposes under the guise of peaceful nuclear energy program and discuss the possibility of new sanctions against Iran. Iran insists that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes and aimed at covering country's electricity demand.
According to Yevseyev, unless the situation with the nuclear program somehow normalizes, the issue of promoting Iran's status in the SCO to a full-right member of the organization can not be topic of discussions. But to predict when and how it is possible to solve this problem is very difficult," he said.
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