Iran International
China’s recent backing of the United Arab Emirates’ claims over three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf has triggered unusually sharp public criticism of Beijing among Tehran’s hardline supporters.
Official reactions, however, were restrained. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the claims “baseless,” directing its criticism at the UAE rather than China.
Even the state-run English-language broadcaster Press TV sought to soften Beijing’s position, saying China had merely supported a peaceful resolution “in accordance with the UN Charter and international law.”
No such diplomatic language was used by ultrahardliners.
“China must know that issuing a statement against Iran’s national sovereignty is a miscalculation in a strategic partnership,” conservative lawmaker Ahmad Naderi wrote on X.
He added that Tehran had so far contained its concerns over the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang and “acted rationally,” but could reassess if its territorial red lines were crossed.
“Beijing cannot treat the One China principle and sovereignty over a rock in the South China Sea as a non-negotiable red line … and apply double standards when it comes to Iran’s territorial integrity,” he wrote.
‘No diplomatic slip’
Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor in chief of the hardline daily Kayhan, was even more direct. In a scathing editorial, he argued that by the same logic China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu—administered by Taipei—could also be questioned.
Shariatmadari warned that Iran could respond by reviving claims over the islands of Ariana and Zarkuh, and even Bahrain, which remained under Iranian sovereignty until August 1971.
The semi-official Mehr News Agency struck a similar tone. “This is no longer an uninformed diplomatic slip, but a serious error—one that cannot be hidden behind words or justifications,” an editorial said, asking: “Is China itself willing to negotiate with other countries over islands under its sovereignty?”
Criticism also came from outside the hardline camp. The establishment daily Jomhouri-ye Eslami, funded by the office of the supreme leader but often skeptical of Iran’s ties with China and Russia, noted that Beijing had now, for the third time in two years, sided with the UAE.
“Even if one accepts such a hypothesis regarding the Chinese president the first time this mistake was made,” the paper wrote, “it cannot explain the second mistake or the foreign minister’s current action.”
It accused China of ignoring Iran’s ownership of Abu Musa and the Tunbs to “extract greater concessions from the UAE,” and faulted Iran’s Foreign Ministry for passivity in the face of similar positions taken by both China and Russia.
Self criticism
The online magazine Emrooz-o Farda described the episode as a test of Iran’s diplomacy and of its partners’ commitment to basic principles.
“From Beijing’s perspective, this may be economic and political balancing,” it wrote, “but from Tehran’s point of view, getting involved in the issue of territorial integrity crosses a clear red line.”
Former diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi, writing in Sazandegi in an article also published by the state news agency IRNA, called the trend deeply worrying. He linked China’s initial endorsement in December 2022 to similar statements by Russia in July 2023 and later European Union references to what they described as Iran’s “occupation” of the islands in October 2024 and October 2025.
“In the absence of negotiation and engagement with the West,” Ahmadi wrote, “Beijing and Moscow see no obligation to factor Iran’s sensitivities into their priorities.”
Journalist Ehsan Mansouri summed up the mood bluntly: “Unfortunately, we have become very weak—and Saudi Arabia and the UAE now matter more to China and Russia than we do.”
So why have millions of Iranians chosen to endure the hardship of life far from home rather than remain under the Islamic Republic?
This report draws on official United Nations figures for Iranian refugees and asylum seekers, which begin in 1980 – about a year into the Islamic Revolution.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published no figures for Iranian refugees or asylum seekers before 1980, although UNHCR has been collecting refugee statistics since 1951.
Before the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, there were no recorded asylum cases, aside from scholarship students and legal Iranian migrants.
There are, however, personal accounts involving a small number of members of the Tudeh Party – a pro-Soviet Iranian communist party – who fled to the former Soviet Union. One such account concerns Ataollah Safavi, a former Tudeh Party member who, after fleeing to the Soviet Union, was sent to Siberian forced labor camps.
First decade: War years under Khomeini’s leadership
The first wave of Iranian asylum began in 1980. Shortly after the Islamic Republic was established, Iranians could still migrate relatively easily using passports issued under the previous government.
In this period, a large number of Iranians traveled legally to the United States.
From 1980, the registration of Iranian asylum seekers began with 44 cases, marking the start of a trend that would accelerate through the decade.
The first ten years, from 1980 to 1989, coincided with the eight-year Iran–Iraq war, the presidency of Ali Khamenei, and the premiership of Mirhossein Mousavi, while Ruhollah Khomeini served as Supreme Leader.
Over that decade, more than 312,000 Iranians were registered as refugees, according to United Nations data.
The peak came in 1985, when more than 88,000 refugees were recorded in a single year – the highest annual total of the decade.
Second decade: Khamenei takes charge
In 1989, Ali Khamenei began his tenure as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani took office as president – ushering in what Iran’s official political language calls the “reconstruction” era, a term used for the post–Iran-Iraq war drive to rebuild state capacity and the economy.
By the end of Rafsanjani’s presidency, inflation compared to his first year was up 478%, and the record for Iran’s annual inflation is still attributed to his government at more than 49%.
Against that economic backdrop, the trend in Iranian asylum intensified.
Over the 1990–1999 period, nearly 1.06 million Iranians were registered as refugees, with the peak in 1991, when 130,000 refugees were recorded.
After 1997 – often described in Iran as the start of the “reform era” – the pace of refugee registrations eased for a time, falling to below 100,000 a year.
Third decade: Reform and Ahmadinejad
In 1997, the election of Mohammad Khatami ushered in a period often described as Iran’s “reform” era, bringing a measure of optimism to parts of Iranian society.
During the first three years of Khatami’s presidency, the number of Iranians registered as refugees and asylum seekers declined modestly, before reversing course and rising again.
From 2000 to 2009, nearly 1.1 million Iranians were registered as refugees or asylum seekers, although some cases initially recorded as asylum claims may have been reclassified as refugee status in subsequent years.
A similar pattern emerged under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose early presidency also saw a year-on-year decline in asylum registrations. That trend, however, reversed after his first two years in office.
In 2009, as protests known as the Green Movement erupted following Iran’s disputed presidential election, refugee and asylum registrations reached their highest level of the decade.
Fourth decade: Nuclear tensions and the JCPOA
In the decade spanning 2010 to 2019, Iran’s migration pressures unfolded alongside an increasingly fraught nuclear dispute and repeated economic shocks.
Unlike earlier periods, the trend in Iranian asylum did not ease after Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, remaining on an upward path even after the JCPOA – the 2015 nuclear accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – was signed between Tehran and world powers.
After Donald Trump became US president in 2017, asylum registrations by Iranians rose sharply, reflecting the renewed strain that followed his administration’s tougher posture toward Tehran.
The same period also coincided with the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, adding another layer of regional instability.
Over the decade as a whole, around 1.5 million Iranians were registered as refugees or asylum seekers.
From Bloody November 2019 to today
“Bloody Aban” is the term commonly used by Iranians to refer to the November 2019 crackdown on nationwide protests, an episode that marked a turning point in the country’s recent political and economic trajectory.
From 2020, Iran’s economic conditions deteriorated further, adding to pressures already created by sanctions and domestic mismanagement.
In the years following 2019, the overall trend in Iranian asylum and refugee registrations moved upward, with the exception of 2022, when the numbers temporarily eased.
This period was also shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, which compounded existing strains.
In Iran, pandemic-related restrictions were imposed in 2019 and were fully lifted in 2022.
Across the six years that followed, 1,266,000 people were registered as asylum seekers or refugees.
One in every 15 Iranians lives outside Iran
United Nations data show that trends in Iranian asylum do not closely track changes of administrations in Tehran, suggesting that leaving the country has been driven more by long-term structural pressures than by shifts between governments.
There is no single, definitive figure for the total number of Iranians living abroad.
Domestic sources such as Iran’s Migration Observatory estimate the number of Iranian migrants at around two million.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry places the figure at about four million, a total that includes people born in Iran as well as a second generation born abroad.
Even so, UN data show that from 1980, when registrations of Iranian asylum seekers began, until today, 5,183,000 Iranians have been registered as asylum seekers or refugees, reflecting the scale of forced or protection-based departures over more than four decades. Of that total, nearly 4,142,000 are recorded as refugees.
Taken together with estimates that nearly two million Iranians have also left the country through legal migration, the combined figures point to a stark conclusion: roughly one in every 15 Iranians now lives outside the country.
From the outside, Iran’s migration story can appear singular. In reality, it spans legal migration and forced displacement, driven by a combination of economic pressure and political anxiety.
Many Iranians describe the same trade-off: accepting language barriers, unfamiliar cultures, and separation from family in exchange for the belief that staying offers little stability or future.
Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said on Tuesday that Iran should urgently clarify the legal status of more than $2 billion in claims against Venezuela, warning that experience from Syria showed how quickly assets could become unrecoverable after a sudden political collapse.
Writing on X, Falahatpisheh said lessons from Syria showed the need to settle Iran’s outstanding claims with President Nicolás Maduro’s government while conditions allow.
His remarks come against a backdrop of sharply rising tensions between Washington and Caracas.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump ordered what he called a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela.
The move is part of a broader US pressure campaign targeting Maduro’s main source of revenue and follows the seizure of a sanctioned tanker off Venezuela’s coast last week.
While Falahatpisheh’s warning was framed by the experience of Syria – where the scale of Damascus’s debt to Tehran only became public after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, estimated by Syrian officials at around $30 billion – his comments coincided with Trump’s latest order on Venezuelan oil shipments.
Iran and Venezuela, both under heavy international sanctions, have built extensive but opaque economic ties over the past two decades.
Public records do not clearly show how much Iran has invested in Venezuela, the exact size of Caracas’s debt to Tehran, or the value of Iranian assets in the country, according to an article by Iranian outlet Fararu last week.
Iranian lawmakers have previously flagged specific claims. In August, MP Ahmad Bigdeli said Venezuela owed about $1 billion to Iran’s national oil company, urging Iran’s oil minister to explain why the debt had not been recovered. No official update has since been provided.
Iran has launched or participated in a range of projects in Venezuela, many of which have struggled.
A large Iranian-backed supermarket in Caracas, Megasis – opened in 2020 and linked to Iran’s Etka retail chain – has faced logistical problems due to infrequent shipping and supply disruptions, according to Iranian business figures cited by Fararu.
Joint automobile production, launched in 2006 with Iran Khodro and Saipa assembling Samand and Pride models in Venezuela, was halted in 2015 after years of losses and unpaid deliveries, Iranian media have reported. The project was revived in 2023 during a visit by former president Ebrahim Raisi, though analysts again questioned its economic viability.
Iran has also announced agricultural, housing and industrial ventures, including claims in 2021 that Venezuela had allocated up to one million hectares of farmland to Iran for overseas cultivation.
Officials have not clarified whether those plans are active or how much capital was committed.
Oil, gold and sanctions pressure
Energy cooperation has been central to the relationship. Iran has supplied fuel, refinery services and technical assistance to Venezuela, while Western media and sanctions authorities have alleged barter arrangements involving oil and gold.
Bloomberg reported in 2020 that Venezuela transferred around nine tons of gold to Iran in exchange for fuel – a claim both governments have framed as legitimate barter.
Since US sanctions were imposed on Venezuela in 2019, much of its oil – including shipments involving Iranian or Russian-linked vessels – has relied on a so-called shadow fleet to evade restrictions.
Trump’s latest order has already pushed oil prices higher on expectations of reduced Venezuelan exports, Reuters said, though enforcement mechanisms remain unclear.
Analysts warned that a prolonged blockade could sharply cut Venezuelan output, with potential spillover effects for Iran, which has used Venezuela as a distant logistical and commercial partner to manage sanctions pressure.
In an analysis for Iran International, Shahram Kholdi wrote earlier this month that Venezuela has functioned as a strategic “distant flank” for Tehran, facilitating oil swaps, financial channels and political support beyond the Middle East.
But expanded US military deployments, legal actions and sanctions enforcement are tightening scrutiny on those networks.
Billions for Iran’s nuclear program
Further allegations have added to the sensitivity. Spain’s ABC newspaper reported this month – citing leaked documents now under US review – that Venezuelan state mechanisms may have funneled billions of dollars toward Iranian entities over nearly two decades, including groups linked to Iran’s nuclear and military programs.
The claims, which Caracas and Tehran have not publicly addressed, remain unproven but are being examined by US authorities, according to the report.
“Projects and funds explicitly linked to Iran total about $4.69 billion, with an additional estimated $3.13 billion allegedly diverted indirectly from a China-Venezuela fund. The combined total about $7.82 billion – represents money that investigators say reached Iran's state ecosystem directly or indirectly through Venezuela,” read a report by The Latin Times.
