For Saudi Arabia, withdrawal would be low-hanging fruit. Unless Tehran demonstrates a real break with the interventionist policies of its past, the Chinese-mediated deal will be dead in the water.ĭisengagement from the Yemeni arena may hold the most promise. On all these fronts, the ultimate policy goal must be that Iran has to moderate. Solutions or Status Quo?Ĭentral to the Saudi-Iranian agreement is the mutual pledge to “non-interference in internal affairs of states.” Whether the deal succeeds at de-escalation or meaningfully alters the regional status quo will largely be determined by Iranian foreign policy, succeeding only if Tehran curtails its support for the Houthis in Yemen, Shia forces in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. The success of its new Middle Eastern strategy will depend on local realities on the ground-chiefly Iranian regional policy. Whether its mediation efforts bear fruit moving forward is not up to China, and what these attempts will mean for the Middle East and for future Chinese involvement in the region is an open question.Īs it wades into stormier political waters, China will have to confront strategic challenges that compromise its show of neutrality. While China may be able to tout its mediation of the Saudi-Iran agreement as a diplomatic success-one that has long eluded the United States-Saudi Arabia and Iran must actually live up to the agreement. administrations since 2011 for their strategic withdrawal and bristled at failed American interventions in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and beyond. To regional actors, China’s promise of peaceful conflict resolution has come to offer a potential (but untested) path forward.Ĭhina’s modus operandi of negotiated settlements is also attractive to a region that has varyingly criticized U.S.
The 2019 attacks also called into question the American security architecture in the Middle East. guarantees, which were dealt a serious blow by the signing of the Iran nuclear deal. The 2019 drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE further shook Gulf Arab confidence in U.S. They’ve also frustrated stabilization efforts in Iraq and led (among other factors) to a protracted crisis in Lebanon and a political stalemate in Syria. Since 2011, escalations in the Saudi-Iran rivalry have exacerbated and entrenched regional conflicts that have fueled proxy wars in Yemen. By mediating the Saudi-Iranian normalization agreement, China is veering into new territory, expanding its regional footprint from economic exchange to negotiated conflict resolution.Ĭhina’s change in approach has been welcomed by regional actors hoping to finally bury the hatchet of a decades-long rivalry-one that has had significant spillover since the Arab Spring.
PEACEFUL MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES FREE
hegemony and post–Cold War military predominance in the Middle East, China’s position as a secondary great power has allowed it to free ride on the American security umbrella without incurring the same security costs and without facing the same strategic dilemmas. Historically, China has shied away from involvement in conflicts or taking a direct stand on thorny disputes. China continues to develop its economic ties across regional divides, cementing its position as the largest trading partner to regional powers such as Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern trade with the United States has declined from $120 billion in 2019 to $82 billion in 2021. China’s trade in the region has skyrocketed since the turn of the twenty-first century and continues to expand, increasing from $180 billion in 2019 to $259 billion in 2021. Welcoming the ChineseĮconomically speaking, the Middle East has long embraced Beijing. This could be achieved by curtailing Iranian support for nonstate actors and withdrawing from aggressive campaigns in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the Gulf.
Although Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain in 2011 and has been militarily involved in Yemen since 2016, the Islamic Republic’s policy toward the Middle East-which is interventionist in nature, by both historical and ideological design-needs to be revised. The Saudi-Iranian agreement to normalize and uphold the principles of national sovereignty and noninterference will depend on the policies of regional actors themselves-Iran in particular. Yet China’s ability to achieve its proclaimed objectives of peacefully resolving Middle Eastern conflicts and realizing regional stability will now be put to the test. His research and writings focus on governance in the Middle East and North Africa, social vulnerability, and the different roles of governments and civil societies in the region. Amr Hamzawy is a senior fellow and the director of the Carnegie Middle East Program.
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