China in the Middle East?
Making sense of the Chinese brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia
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PHOTO: SAUDI PRESS AGENCY/DPA/REUTERS
Middle East
From the time I can remember, the United States has been involved in the Middle East. I don’t mean had interests in the Middle East, but they were actively involved in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Cold War was over and China wasn’t a threat, so the greatest threat that faced America was terrorists in the Middle East.
Afghanistan. Taliban. Osama bin-Laden. Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein. Iraq. War on Terror.
Young or old, it was impossible to remain ignorant about these things.
Why was the United States even involved in the Middle East? The older I got, the more this question was asked, and the answer was almost always the same: oil… and I guess terrorism.
As we progressed into the 2010s, things changed, but the Middle East was still the primary foreign policy issue. Gas prices were sky-high. The Syrian civil war broke out. ISIS gained more ground and influence in the Middle East. The Obama administration brokered a deal with Iran. Not to mention, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And then, something happened that went largely under the radar: Americans stopped thinking about the Middle East.
It started with the shale boom which jolted America to the top of the world’s oil exporters list. This created such an influx of American oil that prices tanked as there was simply too much oil on the market making access to Middle Eastern oil less important.
The threat from ISIS was largely handled by the Trump administration via drone strikes. The Syrian civil war didn’t impact America enough to make Americans keep paying attention. America pulled out of the Iran deal. The Abraham Accords didn’t solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but they did lessen the threat that the conflict would spill over to the rest of the region.
Now, I bet most students younger than high school age would not know that any of the beforementioned countries were even in the Middle East. All they know is an America that is concerned primarily with China and Russia.
China in the Middle East
With this in mind, you can imagine why my interest spiked when I saw that China had brokered a deal in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia. From the New York Times story,
Finally, there is a peace deal of sorts in the Middle East. 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 United States but by China.
Similar to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia have had tensions for decades for a multitude of reasons. They have different interpretations of Islam (Iran is Shia while Saudia Arabia is Sunni), want to be the regional hegemon, and have different alliances (Saudi Arabia with America and Iran with Russia).
While the two countries have not gone to war directly with one another, they have been involved in proxy wars throughout the region. The latest proxy war between these two powers has been taking place in Yemen where the Iran-backed, Shia Houthi rebels overthrew the Saudi-backed, Sunni government led by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
The tensions reached a climax in 2019 with Iran conducting a missile attack that targeted the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and disrupted Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.
For almost the whole last century, the United States would have been in the room if such a conflict like this were to reach an agreement. This time the United States was on the outside looking in while its main political rival, China, was the power broker.
As American interest in the Middle East has waned, it seems like America’s presence and influence in the region has as well.
What Does This Mean?
Is this evidence of America’s declining influence in the world or simply a case of autocrats working together? How significant of an event is this? To be frank, I am undecided.
First, it is simply true that regions with power vacuums will be filled by a great power eventually. For a long time, the United States filled the power vacuum in the Middle East. There are certainly differing opinions about how good of a job the U.S. did or whether they should have been the great power in the region in the first place; however, they were undoubtedly the greatest power.
As the U.S. pulls out of the Middle East, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that another power would seek to supplant itself atop the region’s power hierarchy. While Iran and Saudi Arabia are vying to be that great power in the Middle East, neither country has been successful in achieving the top spot. That leaves a country like China as the only other option to step in.
One of my problems with American isolationism in general is an unwillingness to consider the alternative to America’s presence in places like the Middle East. When America withdraws from anywhere, that leaves open a power vacuum that will be filled by somebody. More often than not, I would argue, the country that fills power vacuums puts America in a worse position than maintaining an influence and/or presence (e.g. Afghanistan).
Does China becoming the power broker in the Middle East put America in a better or worse position? I am hard-pressed to think of any way that makes America a safer or more prosperous country in the long run.
Not to mention, the position it puts a key American ally, Israel. A nuclear power, and the Middle East’s only burgeoning Democracy, Israel is acutely aware of the threat that Iran poses to its existence. Israel is going to do whatever it takes to ensure its own safety, which has meant aligning itself with the United States as it was the power broker in the region. If China supplants the United States, then it could certainly serve Israel’s interests to work with China. Again, I’m not sure how this makes America a safer, more prosperous nation.
With that said, America was and is in no position to broker such a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The American-Saudi relationship has been strained going back to the Trump administration when the Saudi regime assassinated Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi. Things have only gotten worse in the Biden administration as President Biden publicly advocated for the Saudis to increase oil production to lower oil prices when they were sky high only to be rebuffed.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran deal signed under the Obama administration reimplemented sanctions against Iran which obviously caused some hostility. The Biden administration has had the desire to reenter negotiations with Iran, but they have been forced to disassociate themselves from the regime in the wake of the recent mass protests that broke out in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini.
This means that, even if the United States wasn’t experiencing a rise in isolationism, they would still be limited in their ability to broker a deal between the two countries. This may be a case of China being perfectly situated at this moment to step in and broker this kind of deal and not point to a growing influence. If that’s the case, then there may not be much to worry about in the long term.
However, China has been tediously spreading its tentacles throughout the developing world as is evident in Africa, so it certainly wouldn’t be opposed to continuing that process in the Middle East. This desire of China must be thwarted by the United States. If the United States would like to maintain a prosperous and free future for its own people and as many people around the world as possible, then it cannot continue to cede spheres of influence to its top adversary. China’s influence in the Middle East following this brokered deal is worthy of serious attention.
God Bless,
Hunter Burnett