Last Friday’s deal between traditional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, brokered by China, is significant far beyond the Middle East. That the Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran are about to resume diplomatic ties and reopen their missions shut down eight years ago augurs well for lowering tensions in the region. But the fact that the deal was brokered by China is no less significant, signalling the growing influence that the world’s second most powerful nation is beginning to wield in a region far from its shores.
The Saudi-Iran deal forcefully signposts the changing global order. Still by far the most powerful nation, wielding great military, economic and diplomatic heft in world councils, the US nonetheless is a diminishing power in an increasingly multi-polar world. And, doubtless, China, still a long distance from matching its US rival, is a growing power.
Till very recently it had little or no influence in West Asia, while the Saudis were firmly in the US corner, relying on its cast-iron security guarantees while they safeguarded US interests in the wider region all around. However, in recent years, especially after President Obama failed to keep his word on punitive action should Syria’s Bashar Assad cross “the red line” and use prohibited chemical weapons, the US allies in the region were led to reconsider more than half-a-century long dependence on it for security.
No longer could they rely on the US even as errant dictators like Bashar Assad and pariah Ayatollahs of Iran played Putin’s Russia off against the US and firmed up their positions. That in spite of its pouring in billions of dollars in financial and military aid to the Yemen regime Saudi Arabia failed to quell the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, underlines the limits of being a US ally. The Houthis in the last eight years have launched deadly missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia with the latter living in dread of one such projectile knocking out its huge oil installations. In short, despite being the world’s most powerful nation several West Asian nations succeeded in thumbing their nose at the US. And surviving.
Iran is the biggest proof of how a nation can defy the mightiest of military powers, process uranium near-ready to build a nuclear bomb at short notice, survive harshest of economic and diplomatic sanctions and yet keep standing to give the finger to the successive US Presidents. Here again, not unlike the case in Syria, the Ayatollahs in Iran cuddled up to Vladimir Putin, the man always keen to come to the rescue of those in the crosshairs of America. Well, the global power play in recent years, especially post-Trump, has seen China and Russia virtually acting in concert to undercut the American influence in world councils.
The fact is that the old certitudes of a unipolar world when loyalties of the West Asian nations lay with the US are no longer valid. An inward-looking America, which last advertised its growing inability to shape the world in its own light when it retreated from Afghanistan without achieving any of its objectives, cannot be a bulwark against a creeping jugalbandi between Russia and China. Besides there are too many mavericks such as North Korea and Iran to always look America in the eye without blinking first. For, these nations led by rogue leaderships can play havoc, bringing the world closer to a nuclear conflagration.
It is another matter that despite the proposed resumption of diplomatic ties, Iran and Saudi Arabia may still find it hard to trust each other, given that both harbor ambitions to lead the Islamic world. Besides, the traditional Sunni-Shia rivalries will always be a cause for friction. Meanwhile, the claim in Washington that Saudi Arabia had kept it in the loop while its senior representatives parleyed with their Iranian counterparts in Beijing does not lighten the blow to US prestige. How diminished US power is can be seen nearer home from the fact that India instead of heeding the most stringent sanctions against Russia after the Ukraine war has actually hugely stepped up imports of the Russia crude oil. And yet the US-India economic, military and technological cooperation is growing, with an eye on stopping an aggressive China from defying norms of behaviour in the Indo-Pacific. Or the US’s diminishing clout can be seen in the European nations’ decision to try and organise their own defence and not to depend solely on the US-led NATO in case of a potential attack from Russia.
Thus, the Saudis and the Iranians did well to try and explore peace instead of exhausting their resources in a proxy war in Yemen and living constantly in dread of each other. The only thing they need to be wary of is the super-power ambitions of China. Too close a Chinese bear-hug can lead to strangulation. Hopefully, the rival leaders of the Islamic world are aware of the wicked ways of the godless Chinese autocrats.
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