Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Iran and Saudi Arabia signal the start of a new era, with China front and center
Saudi Arabia and Iran, two powerful neighbors in the Middle East, had been locked in a fierce struggle for regional dominance. The decades-old feud between them is exacerbated by religious differences. They each follow one of the two main branches of Islam - Iran is largely Shia Muslim, while Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leading Sunni Muslim power. Historically Saudi Arabia, a monarchy and home to the birthplace of Islam, regarded itself as the leader of the Muslim world. However, this was challenged in 1979 by the Islamic revolution in Iran which created a kind of revolutionary theocracy that had an explicit goal of exporting this model beyond its own borders. These two oil-rich countries support different factions in the region. In Yemen, Saudi backs a coalition military campaign against Iranian-backed rebels. In Syria, Saudi supports rebels against al-Assad registration that Iran assists. And Saudi had been, until recently, a close ally of the US while Iran and the US have been in a hostile relationship for decades. So, who could have mediated such complex, deep-rooted rivalries in the oil-rich region? Not a democratic superpower that always tries to give human rights lectures like the US to these historically autocratic kingdoms but another autocratic rising power that wants neither to intervene nor to be intervened in domestic affairs. Yes, China.
Read the article to learn about how China was able to play a role to mediate Saudi Arabia and Iran.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/11/middleeast/iran-saudi-arabia-normalization-china-analysis-intl/index.html
Iran and Saudi Arabia signal the start of a new era, with China front and center
Saudi Arabia and Iran, two powerful neighbors in the Middle East, had been locked in a fierce struggle for regional dominance. The decades-old feud between them is exacerbated by religious differences. They each follow one of the two main branches of Islam - Iran is largely Shia Muslim, while Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leading Sunni Muslim power. Historically Saudi Arabia, a monarchy and home to the birthplace of Islam, regarded itself as the leader of the Muslim world. However, this was challenged in 1979 by the Islamic revolution in Iran which created a kind of revolutionary theocracy that had an explicit goal of exporting this model beyond its own borders. These two oil-rich countries support different factions in the region. In Yemen, Saudi backs a coalition military campaign against Iranian-backed rebels. In Syria, Saudi supports rebels against al-Assad registration that Iran assists. And Saudi had been, until recently, a close ally of the US while Iran and the US have been in a hostile relationship for decades. So, who could have mediated such complex, deep-rooted rivalries in the oil-rich region? Not a democratic superpower that always tries to give human rights lectures like the US to these historically autocratic kingdoms but another autocratic rising power that wants neither to intervene nor to be intervened in domestic affairs. Yes, China.
Read the article to learn about how China was able to play a role to mediate Saudi Arabia and Iran.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/11/middleeast/iran-saudi-arabia-normalization-china-analysis-intl/index.html
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