Nadene Goldfoot
After years of hostility, Iran, a Shi'a state and Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state, have agreed to reestablish relations. This tentative peace was brokered by China after it was announced that officials from the three countries had met in Beijing for several days prior to negotiating the deal. This announcement from the three countries marks a new beginning of diplomatic relations between the two Middle Eastern powers and the reopening of embassies in Tehran, Iran and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia within the next two months. China's involvement in the deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia comes as a surprise and concern to some as U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and China have been strained in recent years.
The agreement seems to have been moved forward during President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Beijing last month. For months, Saudi Arabia has put pressure on Iran through its reported support for Iran International, a foreign-based Persian-language broadcaster critical of the regime that is received in Iran. Since President Raisi took office in August 2021, he announced it was a priority to reduce tensions with regional neighbors.
Houthi Rebels in Yemen (Shia against Sunnis)
Saudi Arabia and Iran have had a wide variety of differences throughout the region, often fought through proxies. The Houthi insurgency in Yemen, also known as the Houthi rebellion, the Sa'dah War, or the Sa'dah conflict, was a military rebellion pitting Zaidi Shia Houthis (though the movement also includes Sunnis) against the Yemeni military that began in Northern Yemen and has since escalated into a full-scale civil war.
They span from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Yemen. Iran has supplied weapons to Houthi forces in Yemen that have threatened Saudi populations both on the border and in interior areas. Saudi Arabia has been increasingly interested in finding a way to end the conflict in Yemen, and this agreement is likely to move that forward.
China hasn't been idle in making friends with other countries. They have been building roads and such for them, putting these countries in China's pocket, so to speak. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), known within China as the One Belt One Road (Chinese: 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations. It is considered a centerpiece of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping's foreign policy. The BRI forms a central component of Xi's "Major Country Diplomacy" (Chinese: 大国外交) strategy, which calls for China to assume a greater leadership role for global affairs in accordance with its rising power and status. It has been compared to the American Marshall Plan. As of January 2023, 151 countries were listed as having signed up to the BRI.
For all this time, Iran and Saudi Arabia have vied to be leader of the Muslim world. Which one acquiesced to the other? What did China promise to do for them?
China's leader Xi Jinping visited Astana, Kazakhstan, and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013, and proposed jointly building a new economic area, the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) (Chinese: 丝绸之路经济带). The "belt" includes countries on the original Silk Road through Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The initiative would create a cohesive economic area by building both hard infrastructure such as rail and road links and soft infrastructure such as trade agreements and a common commercial legal structure with a court system to police the agreements. It would increase cultural exchanges and expand trade. Besides a zone largely analogous to the historical Silk Road, an expansion includes South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Many of the countries in this belt are also members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
Three belts are proposed. The North belt would go through Central Asia and Russia to Europe. The Central belt passes through Central Asia and West Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The South belt runs from China through Southeast Asia and South Asia and on to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. The strategy will integrate China with Central Asia through Kazakhstan's Nurly Zhol infrastructure program.
This is a surprise to Biden, you would think.
The Times has reported that Saudi Arabia has tested the ability to stand down their air defenses to allow an Israeli strike on Iran to pass through their airspace. Both nations have denied this.
In spite of not having official diplomatic relations, they cooperate with each other by intelligence exchange, especially about Iran. In a meeting at the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations, Anwar Eshki, a retired major general in the Saudi armed forces and Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, discussed "their common interests in opposing Iran". So now they have made peace with each other.
Comparing Iran and Saudi Arabia
Iran, a country #6 in size with 76,923, 300 population of 98%
Shi'as and an Islamic state, military 545,000 men. A minority
Muslim religion.
Saudi Arabia, a country #14 in size, with 27,601,038 population
of 100% Sunnis and also an Islamic state, military 199,500 men,
majority Muslim religion.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-did-china-help-saudi-arabia-and-iran-resume-diplomatic-ties
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