Welcome to the post-America moment in the Middle East.
US influence has been eroding for decades, from the destructive overreach of the post-9/11 years to the transactional diplomacy of President Donald Trump.
Here we are now officially, with China brokering a detente deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia and Iran restarted diplomatic relations after seven years of high tensions and violent exchanges between them. Within two months, they will reopen embassies and have both pledged “respect for the sovereignty of states and noninterference in their internal affairs.” The two countries have been engaged in a proxy war in Yemen over the past eight years that has calmed down until recently, and have been on opposite sides of conflicts throughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. While normalization may not mean a cessation of violence throughout the region, the pause in outright hostilities between the two should be welcomed by all. The breakthrough builds on several years of talks in Iraq and Oman.
And the most interesting dynamic may be that China led the way.
“If you create a diplomatic vacuum, someone’s going to fill it. That’s basically what’s happened to US policy in the Gulf,” says Chas Freeman, a retired career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East and China. “It’s a really major development.”
That China played a role shows where global power is shifting — and a meaningful change in how Chinese President Xi Jinping conducts Middle East policy. Thus far, Beijing has been cautious in taking an active role there; this diplomacy, while significant, doesn’t mean China is trying to displace the US security role in the Middle East, Freeman explained. Instead, China is “trying to produce a peaceful, international environment there, in which you can do business,” he told me.
Saudi Arabia, long a US partner, appears to be shaking off its commitment to a unipolar US world….
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