TEHRAN -- The prospect of a trilateral meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen has revived an uncomfortable historical analogy: Yalta. 
The 1945 conference remains a powerful symbol of how great powers can negotiate the fate of other nations, sometimes without their participation or consent. 
For Iran, the question is not simply whether its name will appear on the agenda of such a meeting, but whether its national interests will be respected in any emerging geopolitical arrangement.
Iran should approach this prospect with neither apprehension nor complacency. The Islamic Republic is not the Iran of decades past, nor is it a country whose regional and international position can be determined through a private understanding among three world leaders. 
The geopolitical realities of 2026 are fundamentally different from those of 1945. Iran has developed significant political, strategic, military, economic and technological capabilities and has become an actor whose interests and calculations cannot be excluded from any serious discussion about the future of West Asia.