June 12, 2019

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in Iran for a two-day mission with clear goals: to secure his country’s energy supply, and to bring adversaries Iran and the U.S. to the negotiating table.

Both are challenging feats, and they require Abe — an ally of President Donald Trump and the first Japanese prime minister to visit Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution — to walk a thin tightrope between Japan’s economic needs and its maintenance of geopolitical relationships.

Japan imports nearly all of its oil, and most of it from the Middle East, so sanctions on Iranian crude and potential instability in the region threaten its economy. But it also doesn’t want to anger the U.S., its most powerful ally and security partner.

Read more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/12/japans-abe-heads-to-iran-with-oil-and-the-us-on-the-agenda.html