Washington D.C. – The US has described the China-brokered normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran as a “good thing”, despite the message it may send about waning US influence in the region.
The pact between Riyadh and Tehran, announced last week in Beijing, it merely cements the reality of China’s growing role as a major trading, and now diplomatic, partner in the Gulf, analysts say.
They add that Washington, with its adversarial approach to Tehran, was not in a position to negotiate rapprochement, but can still benefit from it despite the alarm sounded by some American hawks.
“The fact that Tehran and Riyadh decided to bury the hatchet is good for everyone,” said Jorge Heine, a Boston University professor.
“It is good for the United States. It’s good for China. It’s good for the Middle East.”
Heine, who previously served as Chile’s ambassador to China, said the deal between the two Middle Eastern rivals was “China’s breakthrough into the big leagues of diplomacy,” but that doesn’t mean it’s a setback for the US. USA
However, he told Al Jazeera that the agreement should make Washington reconsider its confrontational policies towards other countries.
The rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh follows years of tensions that have raged across the Middle East, most notably in Yemen, where the conflict between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-allied Houthi rebels has sparked immense humanitarian crisis.
china paper
The exact details of the deal have not been made public, but a March 10 joint statement said the pact affirms “respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in the internal affairs of states.”
The two countries also agreed to resume diplomatic relations which had been suspended since 2016 and revives cultural and security pacts that date back decades.
Iran and Saudi Arabia had held previous rounds of talks in Iraq and Oman. However, last week’s deal was reached in China, with Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi on hand to shake hands with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani and Iran’s national security adviser. Saudi Arabia, Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban.
The joint statement credited Chinese President Xi Jinping for the “noble initiative” to unite Saudi Arabia and Iran.
xi visited saudi arabia in December last year and, in February, he met with the President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, in China.
Analysts say China’s role in securing the deal should not worry politicians in Washington, which has made competition with Beijing an issue. highest political priority.
Dina Esfandiary, senior Middle East and North Africa adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank, said detente “will potentially increase regional stability,” which is also a Washington policy goal.
He added that the United States remains by far the preferred security partner for the Persian Gulf states.
China is leader gulf oil importer, both from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the US has largely moved away from energy imports from the Middle East as it ramps up its production capacity at home.
“Because of the economic influence that China has in the region, inevitably its importance is growing,” Esfandiary told Al Jazeera.
He added that a long-term concern for the US is that growing Chinese influence could eventually diminish Washington’s influence over its Gulf allies.
‘A good thing’
For now, US officials are not panicking at the prospect, at least not publicly.
“Regarding the agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and Iran with the participation of China, from our perspective, anything that can help reduce tensions, avoid conflicts and somehow curb Iran’s dangerous or destabilizing actions is a good thing.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Wednesday.
Gerald Feierstein, senior fellow at the US diplomacy think-tank at the Middle East Institute, said Chinese involvement in the deal may have been overstated, citing talks that have already taken place in Iraq and Oman.
The deal “is consistent with what the United States has seen as the right path forward, which is to de-escalate and try to get Iran back into the international community in some way,” Feierstein said.
He added that the absence of the United States from the three-way handshake in Beijing does not mean much because Washington has no relations with Tehran.
“The simple fact of the matter is that the United States could not have played this role,” Feierstein, a former US diplomat who served as ambassador to Yemen, told Al Jazeera.
He said the détente is not a slight from Saudi Arabia to the United States. Rather, Feierstein sees it as a reaffirmation of the kingdom’s strategic approach of not taking sides in the competition between the great powers.
He noted that around the same time as its normalization pact with Iran, Saudi Arabia also provided aid to Ukraine and reached a $37 billion deal with US aircraft company Boeing, a move the White House hailed last week. .
the nuclear file
Where détente may complicate matters for Washington is in its efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program. The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has repeatedly promised that it would not allow Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies seeking.
But multiple rounds of proxy talks between Washington and Tehran since 2021 have failed to restore the 2015 deal that saw Iran scale back its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions on its economy.
The Biden administration now says a return to the nuclear pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is “no longer on the agenda” as continues to accumulate sanctions it’s Iran.
The rapprochement may help Tehran break its economic isolation, and Saudi officials are already talking about starting investments in Iran once the deal is implemented.
Despite stalled efforts to restore the JCPOA, US officials say diplomacy is the best way to address Iran’s nuclear program. Still, Washington has not ruled out a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“We have been very clear that, by all means necessary, we will ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon,” the State Department said earlier this month.
Feierstein said the Iran-Saudi deal makes the United States or Saudi Arabia hypothetically israeli military attack against Iran more difficult. Without Saudi Arabia being “part of that effort,” either by allowing its territory to be used for military operations or by allowing planes to pass through, an attack on Iran would be “much more complicated,” Feierstein explained.
Annelle Sheline, a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US think tank that opposes military interventions, agreed with that assessment. She but she said the complications could be a good deterrent for Washington.
“It certainly would not be in the interest of the United States to be drawn into a war between Israel and Iran, which is how things seem to be going in recent weeks and months,” Sheline told Al Jazeera.
He added that the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia makes such a confrontation less likely because the Israelis now “have less confidence in a sort of Arab coalition backing them” for support.
