The Shanghai Cooperative Organization is the “most dangerous organization that Americans have never heard of,” according to the director of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project at the Center for Security Policy, Christopher Brown. The obscure international club, consisting of six country members with a quarter of the world’s population, is set to attract more attention when it celebrates its fifth anniversary on Thursday because one of the guests will be the inflammatory leader of a controversial country.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will not be just toasting the leaders of the six members – China, Russia and four Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – as an observer to the summit to be held in Shanghai. The Iranian leader, whose country defies the free world by developing nuclear weapons and tops the list of nations supporting terrorism, will also be pushing for full membership in the SCO.

It’s “passing strange” for the SCO – which highlights the “fight on terrorism” as one of its three prime objectives (the other two being separatism and extremism) – to have invited Mr. Ahmadinejad and considered membership for Iran, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual Asian-Pacific conference which took place in Singapore in early June and was organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Not at all, according to the SCO’s secretary-general, Zhang Deguang. “We would not have invited them if we believed they sponsored terror,” he responded to an inquiry about Iran’s participation. Mr. Zhang hoped that other nations, once improving their ties with Iran, would have better opinions of that country. As for the pressing issue of nuclear non-proliferation, all he could say was, “We do not yet have legal documents on the issue.” How reassuring to those who view the SCO increasingly as an attempt by China and Russia to undermine America’s influence in their backyard and beyond.

“By letting Iran enter the SCO, Russia and China would clearly demonstrate that they side with Iran and its nuclear program and would embark on a collision course with the West,” a Moscow-based think tanker said, according to Radio Free Europe.

Iran is China’s third largest oil supplier, amounting to 13% of China’s total crude imports. For Washington to expect that Beijing, which relies on rapid economic development to maintain its rule, would exert pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear ambitions is more than wishful thinking. I hope Secretary of State Rice proves me wrong in her decision to negotiate with the mullahs. But I’m afraid that the country the Bush administration has so desperately tried to turn into a “responsible stakeholder” would once again prove disappointing. As Ms. Rice’s deputy, Robert Zoellick, admitted to a House International Relations Committee hearing last month, when he confronted the Chinese about their dealings with Iran, he was told, “Look, we got our own interests there, we got energy security concerns.”

“An extended SCO would control a large part of the world’s oil and gas reserves and nuclear arsenal. It would essentially be an OPEC with bombs,” a professor at the University of Cambridge’s East Asia Institute, David Hall, told the Washington Times, referring to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The SCO, established in 2001, grew out of the Shanghai Five, which was formed in 1996 to resolve border disputes among Russia, China, and three new countries that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan joined the SCO and observer status was granted subsequently to India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan.

While the SCO insists that it’s not a military bloc, an eastern version of NATO, its main activities so far have been military oriented. Its first joint military drills, for “anti-terror” purposes, were held in August 2003 in Kazakhstan and China’s Muslim Xinjiang region. China views the Muslims who want to gain independence as “terrorists.” Last August, China and Russia staged their first joint military exercise in China’s Shandong province. Taiwan or the Korean Peninsula was said to be the target.

Of course, the SCO in its last summit in July called for the withdrawal of U.S. airbases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, established to support the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. After the U.S. called for an investigation of a bloody crackdown on protesters in Uzbekistan, U.S. forces were evicted. As for Kyrgyzstan, it demands an increase of rent to $200 million annually from $2.7 million. Meanwhile, Russia set up a base nearby, rent-free. The SCO “is trying to ask us to leave the area in a hurry,” an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Peter Rodman, said.

In order to present its best face to the visitors, the city government of Shanghai has taken measures to clean the river, expand greenery coverage, and renovate some public buildings. However, nothing can top this communist-style efficiency: Residents of Shanghai shall be given a five-day holiday during the summit so they can travel to other places. New Yorkers can only dream of having a holiday when world leaders visit the United Nations and make a mess of the traffic every September.

I agree with the SCO that it isn’t another NATO. It smacks of the Warsaw Pact – a coalition of mainly autocratic regimes that is hostile to the free world. The question now is how the U.S. is going to respond. America’s efforts that led to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact should shed some light.

Mr. Liu, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association and general manager of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, is a Washington-based columnist.