Text/Cheng Jing
Editor/Qi Fei
Seven years after the severance of diplomatic relations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, considered arch-enemies in the Middle East, agreed to resume diplomatic relations.
Officials from the two countries brokered four days of talks in Beijing to announce the unexpected news on the evening of March 10. This not only means that the Cold War situation that has been in the confrontation between the two sides for many years has begun to reverse, but also marks that China's Middle East diplomacy has achieved major results.
The news of the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries was widely welcomed by Arab countries, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres also thanked China for brokering the agreement, adding that "good-neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential to the stability of the Gulf region."
On March 10, with China's good offices, Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a joint statement in Beijing, in which the two sides agreed to restore diplomatic relations.
Since the severance of diplomatic relations in 2016, Saudi Arabia and Iran have sent proxies to wrestle in Yemen, Syria and other countries, while attacking each other in diplomatic occasions; But at the same time, the two countries maintained contacts mediated by Pakistan, Iraq, Oman and other countries, and participated in several rounds of negotiations since April 2021 until the "Beijing Reconciliation" was reached.
Behind Shai's "Beijing reconciliation" is the trade-off of the balance of power in the Middle East and the "rise of the east and the fall of the west" of the international order. Whether it is Saudi Arabia, which is worried about losing its "umbrella" and wants to promote economic reform, or Iran, which is trapped by the "maximum pressure" of the United States, out of practical considerations, they all have the demand for normalization of relations with each other.
Li Shaoxian, director of the Institute of Chinese Arab Studies at Ningxia University, pointed out to Phoenix Weekly that in previous rounds of negotiations, the two countries had "thoroughly discussed" the issue of principle, but lacked an influential major country as a "guarantor".
While all parties are excited about the future situation in the Middle East, Li Shaoxian also reminded that the situation should not be overly optimistic - Saudi Arabia and Iran have deep-rooted contradictions and conflicting interests in regional affairs, and how the situation develops in the future will depend on the efforts of both sides. But the reconciliation between the two old enemies of the Middle East in an era of crisis, as Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and director of the Foreign Affairs Office, said, "This is a victory for dialogue and peace, and it provides great good news for the current turbulent world."
On March 11, many Iranian newspapers carried front-page headlines about the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi and Iran.
Shai broke off diplomatic relations many times over the past hundred years
Modern diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran began with the Saudi-Iranian Treaty of Amity signed between Saudi Arabia and Iran's Pahlavi dynasty in 1929. However, in the past hundred years, the two sides have broken off diplomatic relations many times.
The first severance of diplomatic relations took place in 1943. At the time, an Iranian pilgrim was executed by the Saudi government after being accused of trying to throw vomit at the Kaaba of the Mecca Mosque, and Shah-Iraqi relations broke down in 1944. Two years later, Saudi King Ibn Saud sent a letter to Iran demanding the restoration of diplomatic relations.
In the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, Saudi Arabia and Iran had disputes over secularization, regional military dominance, and oil prices, but the overall relationship was relatively friendly.
After the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the first severance of diplomatic relations between the two sides also began due to religious affairs. In 1987, 402 pilgrims, including 275 Iranians, were killed in a conflict in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Angry Iranians stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, killing a Saudi diplomat. In April of the following year, Saudi Arabia announced that it had severed diplomatic relations with Iran, and even Iranians were not allowed to go to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj.
The current round of severance began with an execution. On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 47 "terrorists," including a man named Nimr, a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric in the country and a staunch critic of the Saudi government.
Nimr's death quickly provoked widespread protests among Shiites in the Middle East. On the day of Nimr's execution, a large crowd of demonstrators gathered in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, Iran's capital, with one throwing Molotov cocktails at the embassy. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Iran on the grounds that the embassy in Iraq was broken into and set on fire.
Protesters holding a photograph of Nimr, who was sentenced to death by Saudi justice, outside the Saudi Embassy in Yemen in 2014.
As a major country in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran have a long history of contradictions, and the severance of diplomatic relations is only a microcosm of this. The main ethnic groups of Saudi Arabia and Iran are Arabs and Persians, respectively, and as early as the 7th century AD, after the Arab Empire conquered the Persian Empire, a cycle of competition and conflict began.
At the beginning of the 16th century, the Safavid dynasty of Iran declared Shia as the state religion of Iran, and since then the twelve imams of Shia have become the mainstream faith in Persia. Shiites do not dominate Islam, but they are closely integrated with the Iranian national consciousness and together shape Iranians' unique identity.
By 1979, the Islamic Revolution led by Khomeini overthrew Iran's Pahlavi dynasty and established the Islamic Republic ruled by Shiite clerics. At that time, the core idea of Khomeini's foreign policy was to transform the current Islamic world order through the "export revolution", and the essence of the "Islamic revolution" was the struggle of Muslims and the peoples of the third world against the "oppressors" - the so-called "oppressors", that is, the United States and the Soviet Union and the puppet regimes they supported.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, has made the fundamentalist Sunni Wahhabis the state religion since its founding. In the eyes of Wahhabis, Shiites are "heretics" who need to be opposed. In modern Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism has been entrusted by the royal family with the function of maintaining national unity and political stability. This "top-down" religious ideology is naturally incompatible with the "bottom-up" ideal of Islamic revolution across the Persian Gulf.
Not to mention, Iran and Saudi Arabia have fundamental conflicts of interest in regional affairs. In the Iran-Iraq War in the 80s, Saudi Arabia sided with Iraq and jointly provided tens of billions of dollars in war loans with Kuwait to purchase weapons.
During the 1990 Gulf War, both Saudi Arabia and Iran condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and opposed the use of force to resolve regional issues, and relations between the two sides thawed. In 1991, the two countries resumed diplomatic relations that had been severed in 1987 by the death of the pilgrim. In 1997, Khatami was elected president of Iran and pursued a moderate foreign policy aimed at further improving relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
But that reconciliation process was interrupted in 2003: in March of that year, the U.S. military invaded Iraq and overthrew the Sunni Saddam Hussein regime and installed a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government — and the balance of Sunni-Shia power in the Middle East was once again upset.
Iranians demonstrate in Tehran on January 8, 2016, to protest Nimr's execution by the Saudi government.
An inevitable choice in the face of internal and external difficulties
Since 2010, the Arab revolutions sweeping the Middle East have provided the stage for proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Syria, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), funded by Saudi Arabia, is engaged in a wrestling battle with the Syrian government forces backed by Iran; In Yemen, the offensive of the Shiite Houthis against Yemeni government forces spread like wildfire, and Saudi Arabia chose to personally lead the Arab coalition into the war in 2015.
But in either Syria or Yemen, Saudi Arabia has never had the upper hand in proxy wars. Even in Lebanon, a small country with a population of less than 6 million, the Iranian-backed Shiite armed group Allah Hezbollah has grown in political influence and is deeply involved in the civil war in neighboring Syria, providing military support to the Assad government as an important link in the Iranian-dominated Shiite crescent belt. In Iraq, where the domestic political crisis has just come to an end, its final prime minister is also Sudani, who has deep ties to Iran.
But the counterpart to Iran's rise in political influence is its increasingly tight space for development in the international community.
The United States has been wrestling with Iran for nearly half a century since the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States have been rounded after round, and the Iranian nuclear negotiations have been repeated repeatedly. In 2018, then US President Trump unilaterally announced his withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement and implemented "maximum pressure", intending to force Iran to compromise through unprecedented sanctions breadth and depth. At the same time, Trump is also trying to build an "Arab version of NATO" in the Middle East, trying to win over the six Arab countries in the Gulf and Egypt and Jordan to jointly contain Iran.
On September 15, 2020, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords under the mediation of the United States.
U.S.-Iran relations fell to their lowest point in 2020. On January 3 of that year, Major General Suleimani of the "Quds Force", an overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was assassinated in Baghdad, Iraq. Soon after, Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Hohdi revealed that Suleimani went to Baghdad as a mediator to respond to Saudi Arabia's request for easing relations with Iran, but was assassinated by the United States on the way.
The external pressures Iran faced at that time also affected the domestic political situation. The "all-out pressure" launched by the United States has led to the depreciation of Iran's local currency, the rial, by more than 70%, and the unemployment rate of young people under the age of 25 exceeding 30%. Protests over the cost of living, lack of infrastructure and corruption have occurred repeatedly across Iran in recent years, culminating in a wave of protests triggered by the "hijab law" in the fall of 2022.
The turning point came in early 2021, when Biden began to adjust the "maximum pressure" policy after being elected US president. Iran, which is struggling internally and externally, has also been forced to reflect on its own situation.
Li Shaoxian believes that the first task of Raisi, a hardline representative of Iran's president elected in August 2021, is to break the unprecedented isolation facing Iran. After taking office, Leahi publicly expressed his desire to ease relations with neighboring countries many times.
But into 2022, negotiations on Iran's return to the nuclear deal have failed to make much progress. During the negotiations at that time, a number of key economic claims put forward by Iran failed to receive a positive response from the United States, the Islamic Republic newspaper reported in August 2022.
Wang Jin, associate professor of the Middle East Institute of Northwest University, believes that Iran is less likely to return to the international economic and trade community through nuclear negotiations, and it has become a real need to restore relations with neighboring countries to improve the domestic economic situation.
For Saudi Arabia, it is imperative to withdraw from the protracted civil war in Yemen. Since entering the war in 2015, the Saudi-led Arab coalition has failed to achieve its goal of military intervention, and has instead exposed Saudi oil fields and vital infrastructure to long-term attacks by the Houthis. "Saudi Arabia also needs Iran's help if it wants to leave Yemen with dignity, so the willingness to engage directly with Iran has increased." Wang Jin analyzed to Phoenix Weekly.
Yemenis who have lost loved ones in the war take to the streets to protest Iranian-backed Houthi attacks on civilians in Taiz, Yemen, July 26, 2022.
This is also an economic consideration for both countries. The Associated Press pointed out that the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries may provide Iran with a new channel to bypass European and American sanctions; The rationality of Saudi Arabia's large-scale infrastructure built for Vision 2030 is greatly enhanced by the protection of Houthi attacks.
Saudi Arabia proposed Vision 2030 in 2016, aiming to reduce its dependence on oil and become a "world hub" country connecting Asia, Europe and Africa through the development of a diversified economy and economic transformation. Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the U.S. Middle East Institute, believes that Saudi Arabia needs to open its doors to realize this vision, but the non-stop attacks brought by the civil war in Yemen are scaring away foreign investors, and "Saudi Arabia is eager to end this."
The larger geopolitical context is the diminished U.S. involvement in the Middle East in recent years. "As the most important ally of the United States in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia needs to test where the bottom line of US policy is, and whether it will abandon itself in the future?" Wang Jin said, "What's more, the unilateral resumption of nuclear agreement negotiations with Iran by the United States has not taken into account Saudi Arabia's interests." ”
December 17, 2021, Vienna Coburg Hotel, where negotiations to return Iran to the nuclear deal took place.
Li Shaoxian believes that the confrontation between the two major camps in the Middle East behind Saudi Arabia and Iran is the product of the US Middle East policy. "This confrontation has led to constant turmoil in the Gulf countries, each of which suffers deeply; Now that U.S. foreign policy has changed, Middle Eastern countries will naturally move towards détente. ”
China finds Shai's "greatest common divisor"
After Shai severed diplomatic relations in 2016, Pakistan, Oman, Iraq and other countries have tried to mend relations between the two countries.
In April 2021, the Saudi and Iranian delegations held their first dialogue in Iraq in more than five years since they severed diplomatic relations. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Mohammed said in a television interview, "We don't want Iran to be in a difficult situation, on the contrary, we want Iran to develop... and propel the region and the world to prosperity. ”
In the following year, the two countries held five rounds of negotiations, and the level of representatives of the two countries became increasingly high, but it was still full of discord. Wang Jin believes that a return to pre-2016 diplomatic relations between the two countries will require an exchange of views on many historical issues, such as Iranians storming the Saudi embassy and Shiite Muslim pilgrimage deaths in Saudi Arabia, but it is difficult to reach agreement.
Saudi Embassy in Tehran, the capital of Iran
The only thing that can be called a result was the reopening of Iran's Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) office in Saudi Arabia in January 2022. In March 2021, Iran unilaterally suspended talks, speculated that Saudi Arabia carried out its largest single-day execution in years, killing 81 people, some of whom were accused of "loyalty to foreign terrorist groups," including some Shiite Muslims who joined the Houthi forces.
The fifth round of negotiations in April 2022 involved senior representatives of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the director of Saudi intelligence. After the meeting, Iran's Nournews, which is affiliated with the committee, said the talks were "in a positive atmosphere" and "paint a brighter picture for the future of bilateral relations."
However, subsequent negotiations were interrupted by political turmoil in Iraq. The real turning point came in December 2022, when the foreign ministers of the two countries met in Amman, Jordan, coordinated by Iraq. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Abdollahian said the following month that Iran and Saudi Arabia had reached an understanding on their principles and agreed to hold talks leading to the normalization of bilateral relations.
The recent Palestinian-Israeli conflict has continued, with armed men in the Gaza Strip firing rockets into Israel.
Li Shaoxian believes that through Beijing's previous rounds of negotiations, the two sides "have talked thoroughly about everything that should be discussed", but they need a big country with international influence as a "guarantor" to promote the final settlement. "Saudi Arabia wants a country with influence over Iran as a third party, while Iraq and Oman are obviously not enough. China has good relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, and both countries know that China does not seek selfish interests, so it has contributed to the crucial 'kick in the door'." ”
Watanka pointed out that the United States cannot help Saudi Arabia end the civil war in Yemen because the United States can only exert influence over Saudi Arabia between the two countries, and China, as Iran's largest trading partner, has also influence over Iran.
Wang Jin believes that the talks with the heads of state of the two countries in the past two years have demonstrated China's sincerity and achieved an opportunity for China's mediation.
At the end of 2022, Chinese leaders attended the "Three Ring Summit" in Saudi Arabia and paid a state visit to Saudi Arabia. The high standard and high density of visits and talks mark a new stage of rapid development between China and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. On February 14 this year, Iranian President Raisi visited China upon invitation, which contributed to the enhancement of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Iran, the further implementation of the "25-year cooperation agreement" between the two countries, and the acceleration of all-round cooperation in the post-epidemic era.
Li Shaoxian highly praised the efforts of the Chinese side behind the "Beijing reconciliation": just over half a month after Raisi's visit to China, China facilitated the historic meeting between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing, which brought positive results, "during which China threaded the needle, maintained considerable endurance, and was full of 'Chinese wisdom'."
Iranian President Raisi
In accordance with the Tripartite Joint Statement of the People's Republic of China, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, reached on 10 March, Saudi Arabia and Iran stressed respect for the sovereignty of States and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and agreed to activate the Security Cooperation Agreement signed by the two countries on 17 April 2001 and the General Agreement on Economy, Trade, Investment, Technology, Science, Culture, Sports and Youth of 27 May 1998. Li Shaoxian believes that this will become the "greatest common divisor" of cooperation between the two countries in the future.
"In addition, Beijing's negotiations are highly confidential. Because once the news is revealed in advance, the risk is great. The power of not wanting Shay to come together is not small. Li Shaoxian explained that if the difficulty index of Japan-South Korea reconciliation recently promoted by the United States is 3, the difficulty index of détente between India and Pakistan is 5, and the difficulty index of Shai-Iran reconciliation can be said to be 9. But China dared to intervene in mediation, and seized the common needs of both sides, seized the opportunity to succeed. ”
Li Shaoxian believes that the Shai-Iran reconciliation is a victory for China's long-term constructive diplomacy, and it is also a good practice for China to promote the global governance initiative and the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind. "It gives weight to the 12-point peace proposal previously put forward by China to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict." China will convince the international community with facts that we have the credibility and ability to mediate the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. ”
In February 2023, Wang Yi attended the Munich Security Conference and said that China would put forward its own peace proposals on the conflict in Ukraine.
Radiation effects beyond both countries
After the resumption of diplomatic relations, how can Saudi Arabia and Iran interact? Li Shaoxian pointed out that the easing of relations between the two countries is not only a common need and positive for the region, but it does not mean that they can quickly establish close ties, after all, the contradictions between the two sides have a long history and are deep-rooted, there are huge differences in the interests and views of the two countries in regional affairs such as Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and the industrial structure is not complementary - they are both based on oil and gas exports as the pillar. "The extent to which the two countries can go after the resumption of diplomatic relations requires the joint efforts of both sides, and there must be no unrealistic expectations."
Bobby Ghosh, a veteran U.S. journalist and commentator, noted in a Bloomberg Foreign Affairs column that Saudi Arabia, despite signing a settlement agreement with Iran, will not ignore the direct threat from Iran. These include Iran's nuclear ambitions, the production of ballistic missiles with increasing ranges, and the reported purchase of state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets.
This diplomatic achievement has also put pressure on US President Joe Biden. As Biden nears the halfway point of his term, Democrats, eager to do something in the diplomatic arena, have their sights set on Israel. If it can promote the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it will undoubtedly become Biden's achievement. Unexpectedly, Biden has not yet achieved results, but he has been robbed of the limelight by China. At the White House press conference on March 10, the most frequently asked question was - what the United States cannot do, China has done! How does the United States feel about this?
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, cautiously responded that the U.S. government supports "all efforts to de-escalate regional tensions," but "it remains to be seen whether Iran will meet its obligations."
Reuters quoted Kirby as saying that Saudi Arabia has always informed the United States of the resumption of diplomatic dialogue with Iran in Beijing, but the United States has not directly participated in relevant negotiations. He pointed out that the current consensus path is the result of many previous dialogues, including past negotiations in Baghdad and Oman, and Saudi Arabia's effective deterrence of attacks by Iran and its proxies, which ultimately brought Iran back to the negotiating table. In order to "save respect", Kirby also said, "this is the result of the effective combination of continued deterrence and diplomatic activities of the United States."
In the eyes of Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on U.S.-China Relations at the Wilson Center in the United States, this is a "major diplomatic breakthrough in Tehran, Riyadh and Beijing" and a "milestone in Chinese diplomacy." Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted: "China's agreement to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia back into diplomatic relations has changed the rules of the game in the Middle East on multiple levels. ”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
Trita Parsi, deputy director of the Quincy Institute, a US think tank, bluntly said that developments should trigger a reflection on Washington's Middle East policy. "If this becomes the new normal, U.S. policymakers should be worried that the U.S. is so involved in a conflict with regional partners that mobility disappears and our past role as peacemakers is completely ceded to China."
Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow in the Middle East and North Africa at the Stimson Center, a U.S. think tank, mentioned that if China can play a further role in the Iranian nuclear negotiations and urge the latter to abide by the agreement, "it will really show that China is no longer a secondary player in the major diplomatic aspects of the Middle East and the world at large."
At present, Israel is most worried. Naftali Bennett, the country's former prime minister, who lost the election a few months ago, called the return of diplomatic relations a "political victory" for Iran but a "dangerous development" for Israel.
With the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia actively promotes the normalization of relations among the former "enemies" of Israel. Leonardo Mazzucco, an analyst at Gulf State Analytics, a US consulting firm, wrote that the reason why Saudi Arabia eased relations with its two sworn enemies at the same time is because in the context of the weakening of US influence in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Israel see Iran as a rising threat, and the young generation of Saudi rulers are increasingly concerned about economic growth and development opportunities in the post-oil era, so they are willing to adopt a pragmatic and balanced foreign policy. Frequent interaction with Israel.
However, the process of establishing diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel has cast a shadow over the Shah-Israel process.
In August 2020, Israel signed a peace agreement with four Arab countries brokered by the Trump administration, which was seen as an excellent attempt by the Netanyahu administration to improve Israel's strategic position in the Middle East and an important breakthrough in the establishment of an anti-Iran coalition between the United States and Israel in the Middle East, and Israel's next goal for reconciliation is Saudi Arabia.
Now, Netanyahu, who has returned to the premiership, has become a "living target" of domestic public opinion. Bennett slammed the resumption of diplomatic relations as a fiasco for Netanyahu's government and "a combination of political neglect, widespread weakness and internal conflict in the country," referring to Netanyahu's busy domestic judicial reform and power struggle this year, completely ignoring external threats.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Wang Jin analyzed to Phoenix Weekly that the judicial reform currently being promoted in Israel will cause the Supreme Court to lose part of its powers, or it will no longer be able to restrain the government to advance the process of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which will further squeeze the living space of Palestinians. Palestinian land and human rights have been one of the focal points of confrontation between Arab countries and Israel for more than half a century.
Matsuko believes that Saudi public opinion attaches great importance to the right of Palestinians to national self-determination. "As the chief architect of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, it may be difficult for Saudi Arabia to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel if the agreement does not bring tangible changes to the Palestinians."
As of 12 March, the Government of Israel had not commented on the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Shah. But amid criticism, the U.S.-based channel Iran International quoted anonymous Israeli officials as saying Israel had long known that Iran and Saudi Arabia were in peace talks and had been closely monitoring their progress. The official also sought to clarify that the Shah-Iran reconciliation would not affect the prospects for establishing diplomatic relations between Saudi and Israel.
In any case, the "singing peace" of Saudi Arabia and Iran's two old enemies has brought a ray of peace to a crisis-torn world. The Associated Press pointed out that the establishment of diplomatic relations of the century will bring radiation effects beyond the two countries and reduce the possibility of armed conflict between regional adversaries. In addition to the prospect of an end to the proxy war in Yemen, the return of the Shai diplomatic relations could also promote reconciliation between the Allah party and Sunni forces in Lebanon; The Syrian government, backed by Iran and isolated by Arab states in the 12-year civil war, may increase its engagement with Saudi Arabia as a result of the Shah-Iran reconciliation.
Yemeni Houthis