Iran-Saudi deal: China's growing clout in the Middle East

William Yang in Taipei

03/14/2023

March 14, 2023

DW

The recent Saudi-Iran deal is a major triumph for Chinese diplomacy, but Beijing may find the Middle East to be a tricky region to operate in, say experts.

After China successfully brokered a deal last week to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Beijing appears set to take on a larger role in the Middle East and potentially challenge US dominance in the oil-rich region.

Under the agreement reached in the Chinese capital on Friday, Riyadh and Tehran agreed to reopen their embassies and exchange ambassadors after seven years of severed diplomatic ties and tensions.

The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively the leading Shiite and Sunni Muslim powers in the Middle East, has dominated regional politics in recent years, affecting not only the two nations but also others with both sides backing rival camps in proxy wars from Yemen to Syria and elsewhere.

Beijing described the result as a "major outcome" achieved through "concerted efforts" by the three countries, emphasizing that China "pursues no selfish interest whatsoever in the Middle East."

"China has no intention to and will not seek to fill the so-called vacuum or put up exclusive blocs," Beijing said in a statement on Saturday, adding: "China will be a promoter of security and stability, partner for development and prosperity, and supporter of the Middle East's development through solidarity."
Tricky region for Chinese diplomacy

The deal is a major triumph for Chinese diplomacy, said Camille Lons, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

It also marks a shift in Beijing's strategy as "until now, it had refused to get entangled in regional disputes, and smartly benefited from the US-led security umbrella while doing business with the entire region," she noted.

"But by getting more involved in politics, China takes the risk of exposing its own limits."

Ian Chong, an expert on China's foreign policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS), shared a similar view.

He pointed out that Beijing may find the Middle East to be a tricky region to operate in.

"There are lots of complicated interests and tensions so how brokering this deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia will play out remains to be seen," he told DW.
A long presence in the Middle East

China has cultivated strong economic and political ties with both Riyadh and Tehran in recent years. Saudi Arabia is China's largest oil supplier, with trade between the two countries amounting to $87 billion (€81 billion) in 2021.

Commerce between Iran and China, meanwhile, was worth more than $16 billion in the same year, with Tehran depending on the Asian giant for as much as 30% of its foreign trade.

China has also pledged to invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Saudi Arabia in December for a state visit, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Beijing in February.

Chong from NUS said that by facilitating this deal, Beijing is signaling that it is now not just a leading economic player but is also willing to get involved in politics in the Middle East, a region which is the primary source of China's energy imports.

Tuvia Gering, an expert on China-Middle East relations at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Center at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel (INSS), said Beijing hopes to carve out a bigger role for itself because the region has become "strategically important" to it.

"It's not just for energy security, but on this wider gamut of areas," Gering told DW, pointing to Chinese investments in regional infrastructure as part of its massive multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

The Saudi-Iran deal comes at a time when many countries in the region perceive the US as winding down its engagement there.

This doesn't mean Beijing could replace Washington in the Middle East, said Gering.

"China said it doesn't want to be dragged into regional conflicts, and I don't think that wish has changed even though recent developments may have given Beijing a bit more appetite to become more active," he underlined, adding that China still needs to gain the region's trust before it can become a reliable partner. "China is still a new actor and these things take a long time."

Is US influence waning?

The US, meanwhile, welcomed China's efforts to help end the war in Yemen and deescalate tensions in the Middle East, but rejected the notion that it was stepping back from the region.

It also stressed that the agreement was two years in the making.

"This is not about China. We support any effort to deescalate tensions in the region. We think that's in our interests, and it's something that we worked on through our own effective combination of deterrence and diplomacy," said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby.

John Calabrese, director of the Middle East-Asia Project at the Middle East Institute, said Beijing's role in brokering the deal doesn't fundamentally alter Washington's position.

In his view, Beijing's main goal in the region is still "maintaining its economic interests and expanding its economic equities."

"This requires regional stability to the extent that the US is still equipped to do so," he said, adding that de-escalation between Tehran and Riyadh is in the interest of the Middle East, China and the US.

And despite US-Saudi tensions over an array of issues — ranging from human rights violations to Riyadh's continued participation in a pandemic-era oil pact with Russia — Saudi Arabia remains one of Washington's staunchest security partners in the region.

Lons from IISS said the agreement shows that Gulf states like Saudi Arabia are willing to diversify their security and strategic partnerships so that they do not rely entirely on the US.

She described these countries' approach as "pragmatic" and warned against overestimating Beijing's importance to the region.

"When it comes to hard security guarantees, they are fully aware that the US remains their key partner."

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru

Iran, Saudi Ink China-Brokered Deal to Restore Ties

By Nigar Bayramli March 14, 2023

 
 
 
 
 

Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of China, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and Minister of State and national security adviser of Saudi Arabia Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban pose for pictures during a meeting in Beijing, China March 10, 2023. / Reuters

  

Middle East regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a China-brokered deal to restore diplomatic ties, seven years after relations were severed.

A joint statement was signed on March 10 between Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Saudi National Security Adviser Musaid Al Aiban, and, China's senior diplomat Wang Yi, according to Iran's state broadcaster IRIB.

As per the joint statement reached by the three countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to resume diplomatic relations within two months and reopen embassies and agencies in both countries, Iran’s news agency IRNA reported.

It added that both Riyadh and Tehran stressed "respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs", in accordance with a previous security cooperation agreement signed in April 2001.

The statement concluded that "the three countries declare their decisive will to use all efforts to strengthen regional and international peace and security."

Diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed in 2016 after protesters stormed Saudi Arabian diplomatic missions in Iran in retaliation to the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a religious leader, in Saudi Arabia.

Iran supports the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Yemen's Houthi rebels, against whom Saudi Arabia has led a military campaign since March 2015.

Saudi Arabia had blamed Iran for a 2019 missile and drone assault on its oil plants, a charge Tehran denies. The two countries have also been locked in rivalry for decades, backing allies fighting proxy wars across the region.

Shamkhani said that the move followed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's visit to China in February, and his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The discussions provided a platform for "new and very serious negotiations" between Iranian and Saudi delegations.

Referring to the agreement, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanani said during a press conference on March 13 that the two countries would reopen their embassies in Tehran and Riyadh "within a timeframe of not more than two months", along with consulates in the Iranian city of Mashhad and the Saudi port city of Jeddah.

Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat that the China-brokered agreement does not mean all disagreements have been resolved, adding that the agreement indicated the mutual will of Saudi Arabia and Iran "to resolve differences through dialogue".

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a tweet on March 10 that the resumption of bilateral relations would "provide great capacities to the two countries, the region and the Islamic world".

"The neighbourhood policy, as the key axis of the thirteenth government's foreign policy, is strongly moving in the right direction, and the diplomatic apparatus is actively behind the preparation of more regional steps," the minister added.

US 'Imperial Anxieties' Mount Over China-Brokered Iran-Saudi Arabia Diplomatic Deal


One American intelligence expert urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with "barbarous, but long-standing allies" in the Middle East lest China fill the vacuum.


Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, stands between Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and Saudi Arabia's minister of state and national security adviser, Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban, on Friday in Beijing.
(Photo: Chinese Foreign Ministry)

BRETT WILKINS
Mar 11, 2023

While advocates of peace and a multipolar world order welcomed Friday's China-brokered agreement reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, U.S. press, pundits, and politicians expressed what one observer called "imperial anxieties" over the deal and growing Chinese influence in a region dominated by the United States for decades.

The deal struck between the two countries—which are fighting a proxy war in Yemen—to normalize relations after seven years of severance was hailed by Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, as "a victory of dialogue and peace."

The three nations said in a joint statement that the agreement is an "affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in internal affairs."

"The U.S. encourages war while China pushes the opposite."

Iran and Saudi Arabia "also expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People's Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success," the statement said.

United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric thanked China for its role in the deal, asserting in a statement that "good neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential for the stability of the Gulf region."



Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, toldThe New York Times that "China's prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the U.S. has been able to achieve in the region since [President Joe] Biden came to office."

Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., called the deal a sign of "a battle of narratives for the future of the international order."

CNN's Tamara Qiblawi called the agreement "the start of a new era, with China front and center."



Meanwhile, Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, another D.C. think tank, wrote that "China just left the U.S. with a bloody nose in the Gulf."

At the Carnegie Endowment, yet another think tank located in the nation's capital, senior fellow Aaron David Miller tweeted that the deal "boosts Beijing and legitimizes Tehran. It's a middle finger to Biden and a practical calculation of Saudi interests"

Some observers compared U.S. and Chinese policies and actions in the Middle East.

"The U.S. is supporting one side and suppressing the other, while China is trying to make both parties move closer," Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Times. "It is a different diplomatic paradigm."

Murtaza Hussein, a reporter for The Intercept,tweeted that the fact that the agreement "was mediated by China as a trusted outside party shows shortcomings of belligerent U.S. approach to the region."




While cautiously welcoming the agreement, Biden administration officials expressed skepticism that Iran would live up to its end of the bargain.

"This is not a regime that typically does honor its word, so we hope that they do," White House National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Friday—apparently without any sense of irony over the fact that the United States unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear deal during the Trump administration.

Kirby added that the Biden administration would "like to see this war in Yemen end," but he did not acknowledge U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in a civil war that's directly or indirectly killed nearly 400,000 people since 2014, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.



U.S relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained during the tenure of President Joe Biden. While Biden—who once vowed to make the repressive kingdom a "pariah" over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—has been willing to tolerate Saudi human rights abuses and war crimes, the president has expressed anger and frustration over the monarchy's decision to reduce oil production amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel following the Trump administration's mediation of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and erstwhile enemies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The United States, which played a key role in overthrowing Iran's progressive government in a 1953 coup, has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since shortly after the current Islamist regime overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy that ruled with a brutal hand for 25 years following the coup.

Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs for the Atlantic Council, urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with brutal dictatorships in the region in order to prevent Chinese hegemony there.

Panikoff wrote in an Atlantic Council analysis:

We may now be seeing the emergence of China's political role in the region and it should be a warning to U.S. policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you'll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill. And make no mistake, a China-dominated Middle East would fundamentally undermine U.S. commercial, energy, and national security.

Other observers also worried about China's rising power in the Middle East and beyond.



New York Times China correspondent David Pierson wrote Saturday that China's role in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement shows Chinese President Xi Jinping's "ambition of offering an alternative to a U.S.-led world order."

According to Pierson:

The vision Mr. Xi has laid out is one that wrests power from Washington in favor of multilateralism and so-called noninterference, a word that China uses to argue that nations should not meddle in each other's internal affairs, by criticizing human rights abuses, for example.

The Saudi-Iran agreement reflects this vision. China's engagement in the region has for years been rooted in delivering mutual economic benefits and shunning Western ideals of liberalism that have complicated Washington’s ability to expand its presence in the Gulf.

Pierson noted Xi's Global Security Initiative, which seeks to promote "peaceful coexistence" in a multipolar world that eschews "unilateralism, bloc confrontation, and hegemonism" like U.S. invasions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.


"Some analysts say the initiative is essentially a bid to advance Chinese interests by displacing Washington as the world's policeman," wrote Pierson. "The plan calls for respect of countries' 'indivisible security,' a Soviet term used to argue against U.S.-led alliances on China's periphery."

The U.S. has attacked, invaded, or occupied more than 20 countries since 1950. During that same period, China has invaded two countries—India and Vietnam.

"The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker also published an article Saturday about how the "China-brokered deal upends Mideast diplomacy and challenges [the] U.S."

"The Americans, who have been the central actors in the Middle East for the past three-quarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change," fretted Baker. "The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."

Some experts asserted that more peace in the Middle East would be a good thing, no matter who brokers it.



"While many in Washington will view China's emerging role as mediator in the Middle East as a threat, the reality is that a more stable Middle East where the Iranians and Saudis aren't at each other's throats also benefits the United States," tweeted Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

"Unfortunately, the U.S. has adopted an approach to the region that has disabled it from becoming a credible mediator," he lamented. "Too often, Washington takes sides in conflicts and becomes a co-belligerent—as in Yemen—which then reduces its ability to play the role of peacemaker."

"Washington should avoid a scenario where regional players view America as an entrenched warmaker and China as a flexible peacemaker," Parsi cautioned.


China-aided deal challenges US

Saudi pact leaves America on sidelines

China’s Wang Yi (centre) with Iran’s Ali Shamkhani (right) and Saudi Arabia’s Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban in Beijing on Friday

Peter Baker | Washington | Published 12.03.23

Finally, there is a peace deal of sorts in West Asia. Not between Israel and the Arabs, but between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have been at each other’s throats for decades. And brokered not by the US but by China.

This is among the topsiest and turviest of developments anyone could have imagined, a shift that left heads spinning in capitals around the globe. Alliances and rivalries that have governed diplomacy for generations have, for the moment at least, been upended.
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The Americans, who have been the central actors in West Asia for the past three-quarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change.

The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, has suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player. And the Israelis, who have been courting the Saudis against their mutual adversaries in Tehran, now wonder where it leaves them.

“There is no way around it — this is a big deal,” said Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on West Asia Democracy, a nonprofit group in Washington.

“Yes, the US could not have brokered such a deal right now with Iran specifically, since we have no relations. But in a larger sense, China’s prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the US has been able to achieve in the region since Biden came to office.”

President Joe Biden’s White House has publicly welcomed the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and expressed no overt concern about Beijing’s part in bringing the two back together.

Privately, Biden’s aides suggested too much was being made of the breakthrough, scoffing at suggestions that it indicated any erosion in American influence in the region. And it remained unclear, independent analysts said, how far the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran would actually go.

After decades of sometimes violent competition for leadership in West Asia and the broader Islamic world, the decision to reopen embassies that were closed in 2016 represents only a first step.

It does not mean that the Sunnis of Riyadh and the Shias of Tehran have put aside all of their deep and visceral differences.

Indeed, it is conceivable that this new agreement to exchange ambassadors may not even be carried out in the end, given that it was put on a cautious two-month timetable to work out details.

The key to the agreement, according to what the Saudis told the Americans, was a commitment by Iran to stop further attacks on Saudi Arabia and curtail support for militant groups that have targeted the kingdom.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have effectively fought a devastating proxy war in Yemen, where Houthi rebels aligned with Tehran battled Saudi forces for eight years.

A truce negotiated with the support of the United Nations and the Biden administration last year largely halted hostilities.

New York Times News Service

From: Inside Story

What are the implications of the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic deal?

China brokers agreement between two adversaries to restore diplomatic relations.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to restore diplomatic relations following talks between the two regional rivals in China.

Entrenched on different sides on a host of issues, and in proxy wars – notably in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon – few would have believed even days ago that a rapprochement between the two was about to happen 

The United States was not involved in the deal in a region where it would see itself as the dominant power.

China brokered the Saudi-Iran negotiations – with the announcement of the successful outcome made in Beijing.

What are the implications of this agreement – in the region and beyond?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests: 

Foad Izadi – Associate professor at the University of Tehran

Hillary Mann Leverett – CEO at political risk consultancy Stratega in McLean, Virginia

Ibrahim Fraihat – Conflict resolution specialist, associate professor, Doha Institute, and author of, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict