Dongfang Review No. 9472: “Two Irans” Are Speaking — the Mecca Defence Pact and Tehran’s Capitulation Debate

Authorized English edition of Episode 9472 of the Chinese current-affairs audio program Dongfang Current Affairs Review (东方时事解读), aired 10 August 2026. Translated and edited by Guanri Translation with the program's authorization for overseas-language editions. The reporting citations and all analysis below are the program's.

1. At a Sensitive Hour, Iran's President Calls on the Supreme Leader

Iranian media reported on the 9th that President Pezeshkian, entering the third year of his term, called on Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Their talks centred on safeguarding livelihoods, the state and prospects of the war, changes in the military sphere, and the raising and use of local currency, foreign exchange and energy resources.

It came amid swelling talk of a serious rift and repeated resignation threats. Pezeshkian recently admitted contact with the Supreme Leader is very difficult; Mojtaba has not appeared in public since taking office — Israeli media have been pushing claims that his condition is critical, which Iranian officials firmly deny.

2. Changing Commanders on the Eve of Battle: Rezaei Takes Over the Supreme National Security Council

Iranian media reported on the 10th that, with negotiations on reopening the Strait of Hormuz at a decisive stage, Iran has reshuffled its top security decision-making body. Mohsen Rezaei replaces Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, concurrently the Supreme Leader's representative on it; Zolghadr becomes political adviser to the Supreme Leader — a post he took up only months ago, after his predecessor Larijani was killed in an air strike in March.

3. Trump: Economic Pressure Instead of New Military Action

American media reported on the 10th that Trump says he is prepared to step up economic pressure on Iran rather than launch new military action. On a call, he said in essence that Washington is handling Iran quietly, in mere semi-negotiation; that inflation is severe and funds so short the army's wages go unpaid, with the American naval blockade deepening the crisis; and that with oil just above 75 dollars a barrel, American consumers feel less war pain — things always work out, and the game with Iran is like chess.

4. The Mecca Joint Defence Pact: Not Limited to Three, and Egypt May Join

Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently signed a trilateral joint defence pact in Mecca, drawing wide international comment. Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan said on 8 August, in essence, that the pact should not stop at three members — more countries wish to join, and Egypt may well enter at the next stage; that it is technically equivalent to NATO's Article 5 collective-defence clause, yet names no common threat in writing and is not directed at Iran. Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Dar clarified on the 9th that the pact is purely defensive and open to the countries of the region.

5. Also in the News: China–Belarus Joint Training, and the Democrats' Investigation Plans

A spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defence said on 7 August that in mid-to-late August the Chinese and Belarusian militaries will hold the “Eagle Assault-2026” (神鹰-2026) joint airborne training in Hubei, focused on urban counter-terrorism — reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, seizing and defending objectives, clearing and holding ground — the fourth in the series.

American media meanwhile reported on 8 August that House Democrats are drafting an investigation strategy for a return to power — hearings, subpoenas and document demands aimed at Trump and the businesses and financial institutions around him, rather than immediate impeachment — probing after the November midterms whether he used office to benefit himself, allies and donors.

6. The Program's Commentary: From “Crying for Help” to “Forcing the Palace”

Here the episode turns to commentary — every judgment below is the program's own. It argues this week's Middle East news dovetails with its earlier assessments.

It renews its severe criticism of Pezeshkian: complaining publicly of the “difficulty” of reaching the Supreme Leader amid resignation rumours, the president — in the program's account — first “cried for help at home and abroad,” then escalated to “forcing the palace,” a Chinese phrase for cornering a sovereign, scheming to lure the never-seen leader into the open. The meeting, the program says, means the scheme has partly succeeded. It has previously likened him to Wang Jingwei — the Chinese politician who fled to Vietnam in 1938 and issued the “Yandian,” the wartime telegram urging capitulation to Japan — arguing he is on a road of selling out Iran's national interests, and judging the odds of internal unrest, even civil war, to be rising. It adds a caution: what the program calls Iran's “capitulationist forces” have a broad social base and cannot be cleared away quickly, and the public is not necessarily of one mind against the enemy — some are, not all.

7. The Program's Commentary: The Mirror of Old China

The program then holds up old China as a mirror. The mass of puppet troops in the war against Japan, it argues, was rooted in a society scattered like loose sand. Despite bright spots such as Taierzhuang and the defence of Changsha — two celebrated Chinese stands — Japan rated the Chinese military low; some in Japan even held they had been beaten by America, not China. Yet after the baptism of the New Culture movement and strong organization, China fought an utterly different war in Korea: the former Nationalist troops who had risen up under Zeng Zesheng — the 50th Army — showed previously unimaginable fighting power there. In Dongfang's reading, today's Iran somewhat resembles that old China: not without anti-American forces, but on the whole afraid of America — in that atmosphere, the public elected such a president.

8. The Program's Commentary: Pezeshkian's “China Analogy” Is Sophistry

Iranian media reported that on 7 August Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran would defend its rights through dialogue and not be forced into surrender, defending the memorandum of understanding signed with the United States to end the conflict. Major decisions, he said, were approved by the leadership in consultation with the Supreme National Security Council and the armed forces; Iran had conceded nothing and would honour the terms only as long as the other side did. He asked, in essence: China is America's biggest rival — why has war never broken out between them? China minds its own affairs and grows stronger by the day; if rights can be won through dialogue, why not do the same? He also denied any government–military rift, and the resignation rumours.

The program calls the analogy sophistry. China, it points out, fought the United States as early as 1950 in Korea — its “founding war,” in the program's phrase, whose deterrent force carries to this day. In the program's telling, in 2015 Iran, alongside Russia, compromised on the nuclear question; China since then has faced off against America again and again — the 2016 South China Sea confrontation (entered, the program says, ready for war), turning back India's border provocation in 2017, the 2018 trade war, and, not long ago, a carrier stand-off in the South China Sea comparable to 2016. China, it insists, never merely kept its head down; it has been fighting all along. China, it notes, has crossed swords with every permanent Security Council member — and India besides: shelling a British warship during the Yangtze-crossing campaign late in the civil war, fighting the Americans in Korea, striking back at the Soviets at Zhenbao Island in the 1969 border clash, the counterattack against India, and fighting the French on the Vietnamese battlefield.

Hence the program's verdict: for Pezeshkian to measure Iran against China is, in the Chinese idiom, “the horse not knowing how long its own face is” — a failure of self-knowledge. His remarks, it argues, are capitulationist in substance: “China does not fight” is invoked to talk domestic opinion into compromise, and beneath it lies the complaint that if China and America do not fight, why should Iran — as though Iran were stopping bullets for China. That, the program says, is simply not the fact. It ties this to its earlier criticism of the “shielding China” trope in Russian and Iranian discourse — reminiscent of the “Low-Key Club,” the group in wartime China that urged accommodation with Japan: capitulationism raising its head as internal difficulties deepen. It repeats a standing formula: Iran is a smaller Russia, and Russia a larger Iran.

9. The Program's Commentary: “Two Irans” Are Speaking

The program notes that the fiercest reaction to the Mecca pact came not from the West, Israel or Russia — but from Iran. Rezaei, a member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, posted on the 8th, in essence, that Saudi Arabia should understand a paper signed with Turkey and Pakistan will not bring security, just as decades of one-sided reliance on America did not; only a change of policy lets a country stop entrusting its security to others.

The immediate reason for the sharpness, the program suggests, is ambiguity in the collective-defence clause. American forces use Saudi bases; if Iran strikes those bases and that counts as “an attack on Saudi Arabia,” Turkey and Pakistan would be bound to aid Riyadh against Iran. But the pact, it stresses, is not aimed specifically at Iran — the cap fits whoever chooses to wear it. India reacted just as sharply; Afghanistan — which the program describes as hostile to all three signatories — has said nothing.

From this comes the episode's central judgment: “two Irans” are now speaking — the Iran of what the program calls the “capitulation camp” (投降派) and of what it calls the “resistance camp” (抵抗派) — much as wartime China could be roughly divided into forces of capitulation and resistance. In Dongfang's reading, today's objections come mostly from the capitulation camp represented by Pezeshkian, speaking for the Iranian government; the resistance camp understands the pact is not directed at it, and so has said nothing.

10. The Program's Commentary: The Pact's Deeper Logic — and a Warning to Iran

The program has previously dubbed such an alliance an “Islamic version of the Warsaw Pact.” Its members are heavily equipped with Chinese weapons — Turkey's rocket artillery and drones, too, have Chinese bloodlines — and China, in the program's judgment, is glad to see the pact — indeed, it speculates, the capitulation camp's wrong signals have forced even China to adjust its policy.

It also revives a concept it coined years ago: “revere the kings, expel the barbarians” (尊王攘夷), a classical East Asian slogan. The “kings” are the Middle East's four regional powers — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran; the “barbarians” are two — the Western barbarian led by American imperialism and the barbarian of Russian imperialism. The pact is moving in exactly that direction, squeezing American and Russian military power and influence out of the Middle East: Turkey and Saudi Arabia are in, Egypt may join, only Iran remains. The program recalls that when Pezeshkian earlier visited Pakistan, the resistance camp had him carry a proposal for a multilateral cooperation framework of Persian Gulf states — proof, it says, that the resistance camp is willing.

Why does the capitulation camp obstruct? Because, the program argues, in a Middle East order resting on international society and shutting out outside powers, there is no room left in which to surrender. It renews its criticism of the “sole dominance of the Persian Gulf” talk: to float once more a claim to command the Gulf's shipping lanes would only cut Iran off from the Gulf states and the international community, isolate it, and drag the whole country into the ditch — bringing, in the Chinese phrase, pain to friends and joy to enemies.

The program ends with a warning: Iran has run out of time. If the capitulation camp carries on, states like Saudi Arabia will waver, and the situation will move in the adversary's favour.

Views expressed are those of the original program. Translation authorized for overseas publication; the Chinese original is not republished here.