On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.
Xi is, in fact, on his way to Russia, possibly as soon as next week, with a 12-point peace plan -- ostensibly to see if he can pull off the same wizardry with Ukraine, but more likely to nail down plans to seize Taiwan.
China as the world's new power-broker anywhere, especially in the Middle East -- until Biden squandered America's alliances there -- is conceivably a seismic turning point: possibly the beginning of China fulfilling its dream of replacing the US as the dominant superpower in a new world order.
For the Biden Administration, this is a blow for which it has only itself to thank.
From the outset of his presidency, President Joe Biden completely deprioritized the Middle East: "If you are going to list the regions Biden sees as a priority, the Middle East is not in the top three," a former senior national security official and close Biden adviser told Politico in 2021.
Biden then proved this highly unwise policy to anyone in doubt with his disastrous Afghanistan exit, creating a power vacuum in the region and demonstrating to allies everywhere that they could not rely on the US.
Biden then decisively cleared the path for China with his calamitous policies toward Saudi Arabia, creating another power vacuum. Enter Xi.
Saudi Arabia for decades relied on the US for its security. Since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ascended to the second-most important position in the kingdom in 2017, he has expressed interest in loosening human right restrictions somewhat and seeking economic diversification. Then came Biden, campaigning for the presidency with the promise to make Saudi Arabia "pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are." He threw in gratuitously that there was "very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia."
Making matters worse, the Biden administration has continued relentlessly to try to revive the flawed 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal" with Iran -- which is the pinnacle of "social redeeming value?" The Trump Administration had withdrawn from the deal after mountains of evidence kept turning up that Iran had reportedly been cheating "since day one." Meanwhile the Biden Administration kept completely ignoring the legitimate fears that Saudi Arabia had of a nuclear Iran.
"Washington and the West have not been serious about the region's security since concluding the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015," wrote Tariq Al-Homayed, a leading Saudi journalist and former newspaper editor following the Chinese-brokered deal.
As recently as January, when International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi made it clear that "only countries making bombs" are enriching uranium at Iran's level, Saudi Arabia's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir repeated the Saudi concerns:
"I believe that Iran has an obligation to give up its nuclear program. I believe that Iran must be in compliance with the terms of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, if it wants to be a member in good standing of the international community needs to respect international law, needs to respect international order."
In addition to ignoring Saudi security concerns about Iran's escalating nuclear weapons program, Biden also let Iran's terrorist proxies off the hook. He removed Yemen's Iranian-sponsored Houthi terrorist group from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February 2021, and refused to put it back even after the Houthis resumed missile and drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates, as well as more attacks on the Saudi Arabia (here and here).
"Providing ballistic missiles to terrorist groups," Saudi Minister al-Jubeir recently noted, "is not acceptable... Providing drones to the Houthis in Yemen is also unacceptable."
Is it any wonder, then, that in the vacuum the US created, the Saudis felt pushed towards China and Iran? What, after all, was their alternative?
The Saudis had given the Biden Administration plenty of hints about the extent to which relations have soured.
The entire world witnessed how Saudi Arabia's low-key reception of Biden in July 2022, complete with awkward fist bump, contrasted with the lavish welcome reception that was bestowed on China's Xi Jinping when he visited the kingdom in December 2022. Yet the Biden administration was at a complete loss as to how to reassert itself and reengage with Saudi Arabia to restore relations and bring back at least a trace of American influence. It is likely that the Saudis were hoping that the Americans, even at the last minute, would pledge completely to terminate their negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, which permits Iran unlimited nuclear weapons.
According to Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution:
"What is notable of course is the decision to hand the Chinese a huge public relations victory — a photo op that is intended to demonstrate China's newfound stature in the region. In that sense, it would appear to be yet another Saudi slap in the face to the Biden administration."
The harmful effects of the China-brokered agreement, however, amount to much more than a mere "Saudi slap" to the Biden Administration -- especially after the US surrender to a terrorist group, the Taliban, in 2021; the disastrous retreat from the Bagram Air Base; and the Chinese spy balloon hovering for a full week over the most strategic US military sites. They add up to an even more diminished international standing for the US.
China can now boast that it is able to rearrange the pieces on the global chessboard, upend alliances that have dominated the international world order for decades, and make peace between enemies. If China can do all that, what else can it do?
China and other aggressors also cannot avoid seeing America's non-stop ineptitude, whether the focus in the US military on teaching critical race theory and "climate change" rather than on how to win or deter wars; billions for "climate change," which must give China, which is building "six times more coal plants than other countries," a good laugh, while the US military budget has been in a steady net-decline, outpaced by Biden's 6% inflation. Someone has not been minding the store.
Above all, the new agreement has unmistakably signaled to the world that the US is a power whose best days are behind it. That impression could only have been reinforced by White House Spokesman John Kirby's lame comment made after Saudi-Iranian agreement: "We support any effort to de-escalate tensions there."
The Middle East region, apart from Israel, consists of more-or-less authoritarian states that share China's views on state sovereignty, non-interference, and evidently not all that much interest in human rights. Will more countries be willing to reject an international order based on democratic values -- not to mention the world's reserve currency -- of the US?
Dominating the world and replacing the US as the world's dominant superpower by 2049 -- militarily, economically, technologically and geopolitically -- is what China has coveted for decades.
The deal "proves that Chinese medicine can solve problems that western medicine cannot solve," announced Wang Yiwei, the director of the Institute of International Affairs at China's Renmin University.
Most tragically, all the US decisions, from blocking US energy production to closing down the "China Initiative" to prevent further espionage, and including those above, that led to this juncture appear totally unnecessary own-goals.
"This is a battle of narratives for the future of the international order," said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based research institute. "China is saying the world is in chaos because U.S. leadership has failed."
Again.
John Richardson is a researcher based in the United States.
Raphael