TEHRAN, Iran — Uzbekistan hosted the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on June 23-24. As expected, Iran’s accession was one of the main topics on the agenda. However, according to Russia's special presidential envoy, Bakhtier Khakimov, SCO members failed to reach an agreement on initiating the accession process for Iran despite Moscow’s support for the idea, once again triggering debate over the reasons behind the rejection of Iran. However, a more important and fundamental question is whether Iran really needs to join the SCO at all.
Having been an observer state in the organization since 2005, Iran presented its request for full membership in 2008 under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad’s attempts to join the SCO were part of his grand foreign policy approach called "Look to the East," the main basis of which was strengthening relations with Asian and Latin American powers to offset Iran’s deteriorating ties with the West. However, SCO members — above all Russia — rejected Iran’s request. They argued that SCO regulations disqualify countries under international sanctions for full membership status.