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Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud hold a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
As diplomatic thaw continues, Saudi Arabia and Iran exchange ambassadors
The rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran continued this week when the two Middle East powers exchanged ambassadors for the first time in seven years. This comes after they reopened embassies in each other's capitals over the past few months as part of a groundbreaking detente.
Quick recap: The two states had been at loggerheads for years, but things reached a nadir in 2016 after the execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia prompted Iranian protesters to storm the Saudi mission in Tehran.
Back in March, China mediated a diplomatic breakthrough between the two forever enemies that have long been locked in regional proxy wars. It was a massive blow for the US, which is concerned about China’s growing clout in the region – at its expense.
Some takeaways: This move suggests that the two sides are committed to moving relations along – even if trust remains limited and the Saudis don’t appear to have much faith that Iran will change its bellicose activities in the region.
This also appears to fit in with Riyadh’s broader strategy of preempting and ameliorating regional crises – including a recent thaw with Bashar Assad in Syria and a potential one with Israel – to lure the investment needed to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons under its Vision 2030 economic agenda.
Garbage bags that have been piling up on the pavement as waste collectors are on strike since March 6 to protest against the French government's proposed pensions reform, in Paris on March 27, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Eiffel Tower of trash, ELN attack, Saudi-China lovefest, drill baby drill is back, dream on Lesotho
10,000: Sanitation workers in Paris finally returned to work Wednesday, ending a weekslong strike over the government's controversial law to raise the minimum retirement age to 64. The City of Lights is now a stinker buried under 10,000 metric tons of trash — roughly the same weight as the iconic Eiffel Tower.
9: At least nine Colombian soldiers at a base in the country's northeast were killed in an attack by rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN). This attack comes as President Gustavo Petro, who's facing very low approval ratings, says he is trying to bring "total peace" to Colombia.
9: Saudi Arabia will become the ninth dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the first step toward full membership in the China-led security bloc. Riyadh is moving closer to Beijing and further away from Washington since the Chinese brokered an Iran-Saudi détente earlier this month.
73.3 million: The Biden administration is auctioning off 73.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico — an area the size of Italy — for oil and gas drilling. So much for the dude who campaigned on ending (new) drill, baby, drill on federal lands.
93,000: The parliament of Lesotho, a landlocked mountain kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa, is debating a motion to more than triple its size to 93,000 square miles by claiming big chunks of its neighbor's territory that Lesotho says were taken by white South African settlers. We will keep an ear out for the laughter coming from Pretoria.
Washington watches as Beijing bargains
China announced last Friday it had brokered a deal to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia for the first time in seven years. Beijing will also reportedly host a summit later this year, bringing together representatives from Iran and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Like all early stage diplomatic breakthroughs, this one remains fragile. It will take at least two months to hammer out details, and Iranians and Saudis aren’t about to become fast friends. But President Xi Jinping wouldn’t trumpet this news unless he believed all relevant parties were sincerely interested in an agreement of substance.
This is something Joe Biden might call a “big F deal.”
First, any handshake that puts a floor under relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two most important rivals in a critically important region, matters for stability.
Second, China is swimming into uncharted waters here. In the past, Beijing confined its leadership in diplomatic interventions to Asia, avoiding direct involvement in anything not directly relevant to China’s national security. And now we see China brokering a Middle East deal that Americans and Europeans could not have made.
It’s also a big deal because China might successfully hold Iran to its promises to not build a nuclear weapon, a point toward which Iran appears to have edged ever closer in recent weeks. That would be good for the region, for the world, and for US and Israeli national security.
It’s also impossible to end the horrible war in Yemen, and the humanitarian catastrophes it has triggered, without bringing Iranians and Saudis to the table. The agreement China announced is only a first step, but the newly pragmatic relations could bring the Yemen conflict – in which Tehran supports the Houthi rebels and Riyadh supports the Yemeni government – to a halt much sooner.
In fact, China’s Middle East plan underscores the limited value of a Biden administration foreign policy the US president continues to insist is built on support for democracy through containment of autocracy.
There won’t be any freely or fairly elected officials at Beijing’s Middle East summit. Outside Israel, there aren’t many Middle Eastern democracies to defend (and even Israel’s on dicier ground these days …). Also, you can’t broker a deal unless you’re talking to both sides … and unless both sides see you as an honest broker. It’s been a while since the US and Saudi governments have seen eye-to-eye on the issues of the day, while US and Iranian officials (very) rarely appear publicly in the same room together.
Nor is the US a predictable partner in the Middle East these days. The Saudis don’t want to see Iran develop a nuclear weapon, and Iranians want to know what they’ll get by cutting a deal to trade that opportunity away. Barack Obama made a deal. Donald Trump withdrew from the deal. Joe Biden wants back in the deal. Maybe. Why should anyone in the Middle East believe Washington can steer a straight course?
Saudis and Emiratis can also see the US hasn’t done much to stop Iranian drone strikes on their territory and infrastructure. If China can bring leaders together to put an end to those attacks, why should they say no?
But China’s new diplomatic ambitions aren’t limited to the Middle East.
After unveiling a detailed framework to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, Xi is now prepping for a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky and a visit to Moscow to see his friend Vladimir Putin.
In this case, we should be more skeptical of China’s value. Here, the honest broker principle works against Beijing. China’s Ukraine plan is entirely unacceptable for Kyiv, mainly because it doesn’t call on Russian invaders to leave Ukraine, and Zelensky still insists Ukraine’s army can push them out. Zelensky knows there’s a big difference between China's strategic partnership with Russia and its nominal recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese aren’t going to condemn Russia’s illegal invasion, illegal annexations, or war crimes.
But even here, China may eventually offer something the US can’t. Unless one side wins a highly unlikely complete victory, the war in Ukraine must eventually end with some kind of sustainable deal between Moscow and Kyiv. China is potentially in a better position to broker that agreement than the Americans and Europeans, whom many outsiders feel are pushing for escalation and enabling more bloodshed by providing military support for Ukraine and slapping sanctions on Russia.
Let me be clear: I personally support Western backing for Ukraine against naked Russian aggression. But most of the developing world, an audience China would like to engage, is less interested in justice for Ukraine than an end to a war that’s inflicting real damage on the global economy and distracting world leaders from addressing problems they care far more about … like economic recovery from the pandemic’s damage to the global economy and a plan to manage their growing debt in a reasonable way.
More broadly, Washington should see both risks and opportunities in China’s more ambitious global diplomatic role.
It’s not like China is about to replace the United States in the Middle East. Given the hardware the US already has patrolling the skies and waters of the region, Beijing would have to spend billions upon billions over many years to supplant that influence.
Nor is the US retreating from China’s backyard. The American withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership limited Washington’s economic influence in Asia, but the US remains critical for the security of its many Asian and Pacific allies. Washington is now extending that commitment with its Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Japan, India, and Australia.
But a larger global leadership role for China will come at a cost for US influence.
In the Middle East, Washington has a big presence, but it doesn’t have a clear purpose. It’s on the wrong side of most Middle Eastern countries, in part because the Biden administration wants to transition away from fossil fuels, but offers little talk about the continuing importance of hydrocarbons for keeping that transition stable. In that sense, the Gulf oil producers don't share a core interest with the US. China, on the other hand, isn’t ambivalent about quenching its thirst for fossil fuel. Given that the Saudis and Iranians will have to compete with Russia to sell oil to China, new deals with Riyadh have extra value.
It’s in the US national interest to welcome others to broker peace where Americans can’t. But there will be areas where China’s diplomacy won’t make Washington happy. We’ll get a good look at that problem when Xi turns up in Moscow as an ostensible peacemaker, rather than as an enabler of the man who launched this war.
Given the Chinese president’s startlingly explicit recent criticism of the US and its role in the world, the most hawkish comments made by a Chinese leader about Washington in decades, it’s clear there will be plenty of instances where US and Chinese interests just don’t align.Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, China and Iran at a summit in Beijing.
Is China’s Saudi-Iran diplomatic deal for real?
“Welcome to the post-America moment in the Middle East,” one commentator wrote after the surprising news broke last week that China had mediated a diplomatic breakthrough between two forever enemies: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Others hailed the exciting prospect of peace between two countries that have long been locked in regional proxy wars.
But are these hot takes jumping the gun? Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto decision maker known as MBS, once said Iran’s supreme leader “makes Hitler look good.” So why has he bought into this rapprochement – and why now?
First, what’s actually in the deal? Last Friday, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced that they had agreed to restore full diplomatic ties within two months after China stepped in to mediate a deal. While the announcement was light on details, Riyadh and Tehran have broadly committed to reopening diplomatic missions in each other's capitals, as well as to activate security arrangements, though it is unclear exactly how they would stamp out proxy wars in places like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, where they have divergent interests.
While the two states have long been divided over competing visions of Islam and vied for regional dominance, diplomatic relations were severed entirely in 2016 after the execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia prompted Iranian protesters to storm the Saudi mission in Tehran.
If diplomatic breakthroughs come and go, why is this one such a big deal? First, whether in the schoolyard or at the negotiating table in Geneva, it’s always a feat when two sides that seemingly hate each other say they’re willing to patch things up.
What’s more, when it comes to moderating Mideast rivalries and inserting oneself in the region’s affairs – whether wanted or unwanted – the US has almost always played the part. This time, however, China, which is in the increasingly rare position of having warm ties with both Riyadh and Tehran, stepped in at the eleventh hour to see negotiations, previously led by Iraq and Oman, over the finish line.
Who wants what? China isn’t necessarily interested in taking up the mantle of Mideast security guarantor, says Simon Henderson, an expert on Gulf and energy policy at The Washington Institute. “I think that China is focused on displacing the US rather than being embroiled in managing Gulf schisms,” he says.
Moreover, for Iran, the perks of such a détente are more or less clear. Having faced a recent popular uprising at home – which it initially blamed on the Saudis for orchestrating (not true!) – combined with a deepening currency crisis and having very few friends to turn to, a cold peace with the richest Gulf state could eventually give its economy some breathing room.
Less clear, however, is why the Saudis – who have long enjoyed a very complicated partnership with the US while sounding the alarm on Iran’s menacing nuclear ambitions – are willing to back the deal in good faith with few security guarantees.
Deteriorating Saudi-US ties: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Riyadh has long perceived Tehran – and its regional proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere – to be its biggest security threat. This view was fortified in 2019 when Iranian-backed groups in Yemen fired missiles on Saudi oil infrastructure, temporarily knocking out a whopping 5% of global oil supplies.
Riyadh was furious that its friend in the White House – former President Donald Trump – first said that the US was “locked and loaded” to respond to the attack, but then proceeded to do … nothing. The Kingdom’s view that it could not rely on the US to have its back was reinforced in 2020, when then-presidential candidate Joe Biden vowed to make Riyadh a “pariah.”
“Whether or not this latest move was intended as a middle finger to the Biden administration I don't know,” says Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow and Middle East policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “but I do think that MBS has a very low opinion of and regard for Biden.”
Indeed, as a result of deteriorating relations with Washington, the wily and pragmatic Saudi crown prince has sought to deepen ties with other dominant global players – like China and Russia – as well as pursue politically expedient rapprochements with rivals (first Qatar and now Iran) on its own terms without the US leading the way.
It is possible that Riyad’s game plan here is to pressure the Biden administration into committing to security guarantees for the Saudis and providing them with what they have long been asking for, Henderson says, including, “guaranteed access to US weapons systems, no role for Congress in approving [weapons sales], and nuclear technology without signing additional protocol.” Chances? “Each is ... a stretch,” he says.
Why now? Stability is key to economic expansion. For the Saudis, long focused on diversifying their economy away from hydrocarbons, a dying breed, de-escalating regional tensions (combined, of course, with addressing its serious reputation issues) is key to luring the investment needed to get new industries off the ground. What’s more, Riyadh has benefited from high oil prices over the past year and is likely keen to use this cash influx to boost the non-petroleum economy – like its nascent mining sector – in the near term.
Ambiguity is the point. The Iran-Saudi row is so bitter and protracted that it’s hard to believe Riyadh has much faith this new deal will yield significant changes in Iranian behavior.
After getting the cold shoulder from Biden, Riyadh’s message to Washington appears clear: We have other friends in high places. While that may be true, China is hardly in a position to provide the security guarantees that Washington does, including, ironically, protecting the passages that allow Saudi to export its oil to … China.
In this way, Miller says, from the Saudi perspective, the deal can be seen more as a “hedge” against Iran. “Getting the Chinese to broker what amounts right now to a stylized ceasefire – it's more a transactional arrangement than it is anything else” – might help the Saudis by “preempting or ameliorating a crisis,” he says.
Washington’s poker face. The Biden administration welcomed the recent announcement, saying that reconciliation is always a good thing. It also embraced the idea that this could finally lead to a resolution of the devastating Yemen civil war, something Iran and Saudi Arabia both seem open to.
Still, Miller’s take? Washington’s stance is overwhelmingly “passive aggressive,” he says. “When your presumptive partner is drawn into an agreement with your preeminent international rival and your preeminent regional rival, you can't be happy about that."
Ukrainian service members fire a mortar towards Russian troops outside the frontline town of Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, Ukraine March 6, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Battle for Bakhmut, Xi’s diplomatic muscle, AUKUS sub deal
The Bakhmut killing field
Bakhmut, home to about 75,000 people before the war, has become an urban killing field. Western intelligence agencies say up to 30,000 Russians have died or been seriously injured in the fight to take this town. Ukrainian casualties, harder to estimate, are also running high.
Russians appear to be fighting mainly to achieve some victory following months of setbacks followed by stalemate. They also hope the eventual capture of this town can boost their chances of advancing on larger cities in other parts of Donetsk province, though some analysts say they won’t have the manpower or firepower to advance beyond Bakhmut anytime soon. Adding to Russia’s complications, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argues that the country’s defense ministry has likely pushed large numbers of Wagner Group mercenaries to the deadliest sites of fighting in Bakhmut to reduce the Kremlin influence of Wagner chief and frequent critic of the Russian military Yevgeny Prigozhin by thinning out his force.
Though badly outnumbered, Ukrainian forces have been slow to surrender Bakhmut because they want to inflict as much damage as possible on Russian forces ahead of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks. For now, the killing continues.
Xi’s upcoming Moscow trip
Just weeks after releasing a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine, China’s President Xi Jinping is reportedly set to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow as soon as next week. This would be Xi’s second trip outside mainland China since lifting the draconian zero-COVID policy in December.
Xi, a close mate of Putin’s who has benefited from buying up cheap Russian oil and gas since the war broke out, has sought to position himself as a key arbiter between Russia and Ukraine. He is not known to have spoken directly to President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia’s onslaught began one year ago, but there are reports that Xi and Zelensky could finally connect virtually next week.
Despite maintaining warm relations with Russia and voting against UN measures condemning Moscow’s aggression, Xi isn’t necessarily a fan of the ongoing war, which continues to put pressure on the global economy and fuel inflation, making it harder for poor debtors to repay their loans to Beijing. What’s more, just days after brokering a diplomatic breakthrough between foes Iran and Saudi Arabia, Beijing is likely feeling chuffed at the growing perception of its increasing diplomatic clout … at the US’ expense.
AUKUS phase two
Remember the 2021 AUKUS deal between the US, UK, and Australia? That’s the pact that caused France to temporarily withdraw its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra after the three allies signed a security alliance focused on the Indo-Pacific and ditched plans for Australia to buy French-made submarines.
On Monday, President Joe Biden, UK PM Rishi Sunak, and Australia’s Anthony Albanese met in San Diego and took the agreement to the next level by expanding the arms and tech deal. Australia is now set to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the US, and will co-build a new submarine with the UK as it retires its current fleet over the next decade. This is a huge deal, marking the first time the US will share its nuclear technology for these vessels since it did so with Britain in 1958 as part of a defense pact.
The arming of Australia is yet another signal that Washington is expanding its military presence in the Indo-Pacific and that London is positioning itself on a greater collision course with Beijing going forward. Crucially, because Australia will rely on Washington for tech support in operating the US-made submarines, some have expressed concern that Canberra’s military sovereignty could be at risk.
Indeed, it’s a good time to be in the weapons business: Sunak has announced that the UK will ramp up its defense spending by £5 billion over the next two years to deal with a range of national security threats – code for China and Russia.
An unhappy Beijing hit back Tuesday, accusing the three states of "walking further and further down the path of error and danger."
China brokers deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hello and good Monday morning to everybody. It's Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Want to talk about China and specifically this big announcement, a breakthrough diplomatic deal negotiated by Xi Jinping, between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Two countries with all sorts of problems between the two proxy wars and major security challenges. When they had the big demonstrations inside Iran against the government, they were blaming the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia for undermining and trying to overthrow the regime. And now instead, you have the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers meeting together with the Chinese Foreign Minister and signing a trilateral agreement saying that they're going to open formal diplomatic relations within two months.
That's a big deal for a China that historically would have played no leadership role in any major negotiations outside of things that are of critical national security importance in Asia, in their backyard. And here we have Xi Jinping announcing a deal that the Americans, the Europeans, literally played no role in and couldn't play a role. The United States doesn't have diplomatic relations open with Iran. Should be welcomed by the world. It's better for everyone if these two major countries in the region are able to engage diplomatically with each other. But of course, it also shows a more significant footprint for Xi Jinping's China on the global stage. A country that right now has bad relations with the United States, no trust and increasingly heading in a confrontational direction.
Now, this doesn't mean the end of US influence in other areas. If we talk about Asia, for example, it's true the Americans withdrew, were not able to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership done, which would've been a big deal. But the US is utterly critical from the security perspective for all of its allies on the ground. Its building more architecture, particularly in terms of the Quad. And indeed, today you've got Biden meeting with the Australian Prime Minister, with the UK Prime Minister in San Diego, in part because of the August submarine and security agreement. Again, important for Asia in Europe, the US is more important from a security perspective, given the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
But on the Middle East, where the Biden administration doesn't really have a strategic policy, things are very different indeed. The US is on the wrong side of most Middle Eastern countries. From an energy perspective, the United States under Biden talking about a transition away from fossil fuels, but not talking a lot about the fossil fuels that are required to get there. And given that this is the most important economic interest for Gulf producers, you could understand, they don't see themselves as very aligned with the United States there. Where with China, which is increasingly the last country standing in terms of global fossil fuel demand, and the Saudis in particular in terms of inexpensive global fossil fuel supply, that alignment should surprise nobody.
Diplomacy, with the Biden administration saying that the world is increasingly a battle between democracies and autocracies. Well, I mean, if that's the case, I guess the United States doesn't have much to do in the Middle East where there's barely any democracies around, I mean, Israel, and they're hanging on at this point, though Netanyahu is doing what he can to undermine it. And you get beyond that, and where should the Americans be in the Middle East if they're fighting against autocracies? And of course, the Chinese see that as a vacuum created, that is an opportunity for them.
On security, the United States still plays a very important intelligence, military weapon export and strategic alignment, certainly in terms of Qatar, but also the UAE, Saudis and others. But keeping in mind that the Americans withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal that was supposed to be providing some level of stability and security in the region, the Americans haven't been effective in bringing peace on Yemen, something the Chinese have expressed more interest in recently. And in response to say, Iranian drone strikes on Saudi Arabia, on the UAE, the United States was not acting like much of a strategic ally. For all of those regions, that the level of commitment that the Gulf Arabs see from the United States is open to question. And that meant that they were very happy to see a China that's investing a lot in the region even, yes, with their adversaries, the Iranians saying, "We'll play a role in fostering and brokering peace." The Saudis very interested, the Iranians very interested. Now, you're going to see Beijing host a broader summit for the Gulf Cooperation Council in Beijing. And the Iranians are going to be likely invited to that as long as the GCC can get its head around it. So I think that China's role is structurally becoming far greater. This feels like a very different Middle East than we had in past years, nevermind decades.
And also, we should talk about Russia-Ukraine, where not only have the Chinese put out this 12-point peace plan, which the Russians have said they're interested in, the Ukrainians have not refused, but certainly have problems with. Well, now it looks like Xi Jinping is finally going to have a direct phone call after being pushed, particularly by the Germans, the French, and others to make that happen. Looks like they are going to talk in the coming week and indeed, that Xi Jinping is planning a trip to Moscow to meet with President Putin soon. Big difference between meeting with, as opposed to a call, and of course, big difference between China's strategic partnership with Russia, and Putin and ostensible, performative, nominal recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is aligned with the way China feels about Taiwan being a part of mainland China. But doesn't mean the Chinese are going to either condemn the Russians for an illegal invasion, illegal annexations, or try to broker a deal where they leave all of the territory that they have taken illegally since February 24th, nevermind since 2014.
I'm deeply skeptical that the Chinese have a constructive role to play in bringing peace to Russia-Ukraine. But I clearly see that China is in a much better position to align much of the world with a ceasefire and peace in Russia-Ukraine, when they are claiming that the Americans are pushing for escalation by providing all of the military support for Ukraine and by pushing sanctions. Those are completely understandable, and positions I personally support in response to Russia's illegal invasion, but from the perspective of the entire developing world. And I mean everyone, I mean Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, I mean the Middle East, I mean Africa, I mean Southeast Asia, I mean even India, a country that's in principle much more aligned with the US than China on most national security issues. All of these countries generally believe that the Americans are pushing escalation in the war in Russia-Ukraine, and that the Chinese are taking a more constructive position, a position that they are more aligned with. And so this Xi Jinping trip to Moscow is I think going to be much friendlier than one would've expected in the last few months. Really, at any time since the war started on February 24th. May well be more aligned with the joint statement you saw at the Beijing Olympics back in February 4th. And that, of course, is a very deep problem for the United States, especially on the back of Xi Jinping's statements about the US directly that he made just a week ago. Probably the most hawkish direct statements made by a Chinese leader about the US that we've seen in decades.
So, deeply concerning geopolitically, probably the worst week geopolitically the United States has had in years. That's where we are. China's a very big part of it, Russia's a part too, and we'll talk about this. I'm sure very much going forward. Be good. I'll talk to you soon.
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