By: Brett Wilkins

 

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 to normalize relations after seven years of severance was hailed by Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, as “a victory of dialogue and peace.”

Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, told The 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 DC think tank, wrote that “China just left the U.S. with a bloody nose in the Persian 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.”

U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained during the tenure of President Joe Biden. While Biden – who once vowed to make the 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.

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.

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 Persian 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. 

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.

*Brett Wilkins is staff writer for Common Dreams.

Courtesy: Common Dreams 

Editor’s note: Some parts of the original article have been cut for brevity.