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As the US and Iran traded military strikes and Donald Trump vowed retaliation, leaders from across Eurasia gathered in the Kyrgyz capital for the twenty-fifth anniversary summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The China-led bloc, now spanning nations beyond the traditional Western sphere, offered Xi Jinping a stage to project patient opportunism while Washington pressed sanctions on Tehran and sought Beijing's cooperation.
Leaders representing a broad arc of Eurasian powers convened in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, for the twenty-fifth anniversary summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a China-led bloc originally established in 2001.
Among those gathered for the traditional family photograph were Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The summit coincided with a sharp escalation in hostilities between the United States and Iran, as the two nations traded military strikes for the first time in a month and President Donald Trump publicly vowed retaliation.
Although the timing was coincidental, the symbolism was widely regarded as significant, since several participating states are engaged, either directly or by proxy, in conflicts with Washington. At a bilateral meeting with Putin on the opening day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged dialogue to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, while simultaneously affirming the durability of New Delhi's long-standing partnership with Moscow, a relationship sustained by India's continuing appetite for discounted Russian crude.
The summit unfolded against the backdrop of mounting American economic pressure on Tehran. Barely a week earlier, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had warned of an economic D-Day for any country still trading with Iran. Speaking to G20 finance ministers in North Carolina on Monday, he claimed that Iran's economy could collapse within weeks or months.
Such assertions are now widely treated with the scepticism they deserve, given the limited effect of eighteen months of threats that have repeatedly proved empty. At the centre of the gathering sat Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose influence continues to expand while American authority appears to wane.
His strategy is one of patient opportunism, profiting from Washington's apparent addiction to foreign entanglement while pointedly declining to repeat the error, calling for talks rather than committing Chinese forces to anyone else's war. He understands that endless overseas adventures have hastened America's relative decline and has no wish to follow suit. As the largest buyer of both Russian and Iranian crude, China holds the single lever that could render American sanctions effective.
Without Beijing's cooperation, the newest measures amount to a paper tiger. Yet the assembly should not be mistaken for a wholesome alternative to the perceived recklessness of the current US administration. Beijing's methods may be less capricious, but their long-term geopolitical and economic consequences ought to unsettle other governments every bit as deeply. A world reordered around Chinese leverage, where trade, technology and access become conditional on political obedience, is not a world of expanded freedom for anyone else.
The week's events also set the stage for Xi's forthcoming visit to Washington, where he will seek to preserve a fragile trade truce even as Trump presses him for assistance regarding Iran. That encounter is expected to offer a further measure of the profound shifts in global power now under way and a sharper sense of what they portend for the years ahead
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation SCO Summit Bishkek Xi Jinping Vladimir Putin Narendra Modi Masoud Pezeshkian US-Iran Conflict Donald Trump China Diplomacy
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