This book explores how international sanctions on Iran reshaped the contours of East Asia’s interactions with the Middle Eastern state. Almost all East Asian political entities, from the industrialized and developed nations of Japan and South Korea, to the communist and developing countries of China and North Korea, have become major international partners of Iran over the past several decades. In addition, East Asian states were, by and large, thought to be among leading foreign beneficiaries of Iran sanctions, and the overall impacts of sanctions in transforming both the scope and size of their rather multifaceted connections to the Middle Eastern country have been consequential.
Despite its significance, academic studies about this topic have remained sparse and scattered. This book aims to partially fill that research lacuna by surveying all relevant information and data available in the archives of several languages, including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. While the book strives to cover the entire sanctions period, most of the analysis focuses on the past one and a half decades, when Iran came under the severest sets of international sanctions. It was during this particular time period that international quandary over the Iranian nuclear program led to a slew of far-reaching penalties and stringent restrictions levied against Iranians by the United Nations and the United States. These recent waves of international sanctions and limitations transformed many quintessential characteristics of East Asia’s interactions with Iran. Such sanctions-induced critical developments and changes, moreover, are bound to play an instrumental role in the direction and volume of exchanges between East Asian states and Iran in the coming years and decades.