Tag Archives: Iran

The Iran-Saudi deal: A bid to end endless war, by F.M. Shakil

Posted on March 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Sunni and Shia will probably wage on-again off-again war until the end of time, but the Iran-Saudi deal looks like the start of a substantial off-again period. From F.M. Shakil at thecradle.co:

The Beijing-brokered rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh is expected to have significant implications for peace and prosperity in and around West Asia, given the considerable influence the two nations wield in the region.

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Pakistan-KSA-2-1.jpg

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The China-mediated Saudi-Iran peace agreement, inked on 10 March in Beijing, marks a significant geopolitical shift with far-reaching implications for the Persian Gulf and Iran’s neighboring countries. For decades, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in ideological and economic competition on the territories of their neighbors, causing regional tensions to escalate.

If the agreement is successful and relations between Riyadh and Tehran improve as envisioned, tensions will likely begin to significantly subside in the Persian Gulf, Levant, and further afield in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan. The former, long concerned about its security and energy supply vulnerabilities, will potentially benefit from improved relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which could help address its oil and gas crises.

Similarly, Afghanistan, whose Taliban-led government is still struggling to gain international recognition and is in dire need of reconstruction and investment initiatives, may also benefit from the kingdom’s rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.

Persian Gulf States

An early litmus test for the Saudi-Iranian reconciliation will be its impact on Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, where a perceived proxy war has wreaked havoc on their respective economies and in their public spheres.

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China Brokers Agreement Between Iran and Saudi Arabia, by Ted Snider

Posted on March 15, 2023 | 2 comments

Saudi Arabia will use the agreement as a wedge in its dealing with the U.S. From Ted Snider at libertarianinstitute.org:

Until it happened, it was unthinkable. The United States has for decades guarded its role as the sole negotiator in the Middle East. It has insisted on being the chief arbiter of agreements and the architect and decider of partnerships. But on March 10, China emerged as the broker of a transformative agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia while Washington was sidelined and left out of the room. The most important recent realignment of the Middle East was shaped by Beijing.

The story is so critical that it is too big to be contained in one story. It is two stories: the shifting of regional alignments and the shifting of global alignments.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been exploring improving relations for the past few years. The feelers began with talks in 2020 and grew into several meetings in Iraq and Oman. In 2021, the two announced that Iran had resumed exports to Saudi Arabia, and Iran broached the idea of reopening consulates in each other’s countries and re-establishing diplomatic ties.

Both the Iranian and Saudi statements following their new agreement acknowledged those talks and thanked Iraq and Oman for their efforts and for hosting them. But it was China that brought them to the table, enabled the breakthrough and accomplished the agreement. “The two sides,” the Saudi statement said, “expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People’s Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success.” Iran’s statement expressed similar gratitude.

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Israel and Its US Lobby Dealt Major Blow by China-Saudi-Iran Peace Initiative, by Grant Smith

Posted on March 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

It looks like Israel and the U.S. are not going to have the run of the Middle East. From Grant Smith at automaticearth.com:

On Thursday the New York Times ran yet another report about Saudi Arabia’s entry into an “Abraham Accord,” but if only certain conditions could be met. It quoted longtime Israel lobby heavyweight Martin Indyk and reported on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy “expert” delegation’s visit to Riyadh to finalize a deal. Then on Friday explosive news broke that China had successfully concluded a secret peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The plan aims to restore diplomatic relations by reopening embassies within two months. They also agree to restart their April 2001 Security Cooperation. Also back on the front burner is a 1998 General Agreement covering economic, trade, investment, technology, science, culture, sports and youth ties. It is well worth reading the entire statement.

As it often does, the New York Times quickly updated its March 9 story in an attempt not to look foolish having given too much credence to Israel lobby guidance.

Too late.

Israel and its lobby have for decades attempted to steer the United States into attacking Iran. The neocon policy coup of 2001 was not only a plan to get the U.S. to attack Israel’s arch enemy Iraq, it was also designed to steer the US into attacking seven countries in seven years, most prominently Iran.

When the US invasion of Iraq quickly turned into a quagmire, two American Israel Public Affairs Committee executives tried to place stolen classified Department of Defense information incriminating to Iran into circulation at the Washington Post. The operation failed, the Pentagon colonel leaking classified information was prosecuted, while the longtime AIPAC officials were dismissed.

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Biden’s Genius Detente Has Cost America the Old Ballgame, by Phil Butler

Posted on March 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

Biden has built up a formidable anti-U.S. alliance and turned itself into a banana republic. From Phil Butler at lewrockwell.com:

President Joe Biden’s benefactors have lost the world, whether Russia wins or loses in Ukraine. This was a poignant message delivered by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson the other day. Forcing the Russians to act, and pushing them into unbreakable alliances with China, India, and Iran, Biden and Co. have almost overnight turned the United States into one great big meaningless banana republic.

I know, these are strong words, a dramatic revelation. But I and Tucker Carlson are not the only people on Earth who recognize what’s happening. The New Yorker just featured a piece entitled. “Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West.” February 7th, Moscow and Beijing declare their opposition to the further enlargement of NATO and the formation of other regional security alliances.

It’s America’s worst nightmare. Biden’s blundering, blustery policy toward Putin and Russia is a disaster for the dinosaurs clinging to their Cold War ideologies, and for the average US citizen who will end up devastated when our country has nowhere left to grow or go. Carlson quotes former President Donald Trump saying that “We will never be Russia’s close ally, but if Russia and China ally, we America will be in deep trouble.” And, so we are. The Fox commentator went on to point out that preventing such an alliance against the west, was former President Richard Nixon’s reason for going to China in 1972.

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Russia, China, Iran… and Saudi Arabia? By Ron Unz

Posted on March 13, 2023 | 1 comment

America is reaping what it has sown. From Ron Unz at unz.com:

On Friday geopolitical plates of tectonic scale may have visibly shifted as Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the most important countries in the Middle East and erstwhile bitter adversaries, announced that they had reestablished diplomatic relations after a lengthy round of negotiations held with top Chinese officials in Beijing.

Back in 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt famously met on an American cruiser with Ibn Saud, and our important alliance with oil-rich Saudi Arabia came into being.

Though sometimes stressed during the 1973 Oil Embargo and in the aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks, the relationship remained our most important in the Arab World, being responsible for the rise of the Petrodollar and the maintenance of our own greenback as the world’s reserve currency. With America’s industrial base having been reduced to a mere shadow of its once global dominance and our country plagued by horrendous annual budget deficits and accumulated debt, much of our national prosperity and current standard of living probably today depends upon that maintaining that status.

Meanwhile, during the four decades since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, no country in the region has been a greater object of American hostility than Iran. As recently as January 2020, we assassinated Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s greatest military commander, who had been considered a likely presidential candidate in their 2021 elections.

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AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Saudi-Iran Deal a Possible US ‘Suez Moment’

Posted on March 13, 2023 | 1 comment

It looks the U.S.’s dominant power in the Middle East has reached its sell-by date. From As`ad AbuKhalil at consortium news.com:

The U.S. does not want to experience what Britain experienced in Suez in 1956: a watershed moment signaling its global decline.

Smoke rises from oil tanks beside the Suez Canal hit during the initial Anglo-French assault on Port Said, Nov. 5, 1956. (Fleet Air Arm, Imperial War Museums, Wikimedia Commons)

The announcement in China on Friday of the resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran (after a 7-year freeze) caused a stir in Washington with U.S. mainstream media underlining the rise of China’s diplomatic role in the region at the expense of the U.S.

The U.S. has consistently aborted diplomatic initiatives of its allies and adversaries alike. China, on the other hand, emphasized that the cornerstone of its policies in the region is peace and diplomatic relations, in clear contrast to U.S. and Western roles in launching wars and instigating conflict.

Iran has been calling for the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia for a few years, but Saudi Arabia snubbed all those initiatives. The Saudi government has been trying to win a brutal war in Yemen, which basically, and paradoxically, brought Iran closer to the Saudi border by virtue of Houthi reliance on Iranian assistance in the face of Saudi savagery.

The Iraqi government (through its Shiite component) has been mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran for a few years. The Shiite political groupings in Iraq are fully aware that a rapprochement between the two countries would reflect favorably on the relations between Sunni and Shiite political grouping in the country.

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Mediated By China Iran And Saudi Arabia Restore Ties – There Are Winners And Losers, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on March 12, 2023 | 1 comment

In a world of ubiquitous hyperbole, this actually is, as Moon of Alabama says, “huge.” From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

This is huge!

Regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to restore ties after years of tensions
The deal, which will see the two countries reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in China and announced Friday in a joint communique.

Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions between the regional rivals.

The deal, which will see the two countries reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in China — a boost to Beijing’s efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage.

The agreement also may put a dampener Israel’s ongoing efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.

The talks were held because of a “shared desire to resolve the disagreements between them through dialogue and diplomacy, and in light of their brotherly ties,” according to a joint communique from Tehran, Riyadh and Beijing that was published by the Saudi Press Agency, the country’s official news agency.

The agreement followed intensive negotiations between Ali Shamkhani, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, according to the statement.

It added that the foreign ministers from both countries would “meet to implement this, arrange for the return of their ambassadors, and discuss means of enhancing bilateral relations.”

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Seismic Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Isolates US, by Joe Lauria

Posted on March 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Seismic is exactly the right word for it. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

The Chinese-brokered diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran not only opens the way for resolution of region-wide conflicts, but foils U.S. Mideast designs based on Saudi-Iranian enmity, writes Joe Lauria.

King Salman greets Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Chinese Foreign Ministry)

Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-allied Shah of Iran, the rivalry between the two major Middle East powers — Iran and Saudi Arabia — has been at the heart of every conflict across the region.

The announcement on Friday that Iran and Saudi Arabia have normalized relations could have a seismic effect on all these conflicts and leave the U.S. on the outside looking in.  

In Lebanon, Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Saudi-backed parties might begin to resolve their differences, a unity that would worry Israel and lessen U.S. influence in the country.

In Syria, Hezbollah and Iranian militias have been battling Saudi-backed jihadists for more than a decade.  The Syrian war could now come to an end.

In Yemen, U.S.-backed Saudis have been fighting the Houthi, who have been driven into a closer alliance with Iran. Obstacles to a peace deal could now have been removed.

In Iraq, reconciliation between Sunni and Shia could make the U.S. presence and influence irrelevant and unwelcomed by all sides. 

In Bahrain, Iranian-backed Shi’ites no longer in conflict with the Saudi-aligned monarchy could sideline the presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in a region on the mend.

And in Saudi Arabia itself, the state’s tensions with Shi’tes in the eastern oil regions should lessen.  

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US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

There are probably a few Asians that don’t cotton to the U.S. ambassador’s claim. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

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Iran-China strategic partnership: The big picture, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on February 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Asian countries are turning towards Asia, which doesn’t bode well for Americans who think America has to control Asia to control the world. From Pepe Escobar at presstv.ir:]

US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (L) talks with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a rally with fellow Democrats before voting on H.R. 1, or the People Act, on the East Steps of the US Capitol on March 08, 2019 in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

The national flags of China and Iran fly in Tiananmen Square during Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi’s visit to Beijing, China, February 14, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

The key takeaway of President Ebrahim Raeisi’s state visit to Beijing goes way beyond the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements.

This is a crucial inflexion point in an absorbing, complex, decades-long, ongoing historical process: Eurasia integration.   

Little wonder that President Raeisi, welcomed by a standing ovation at Peking University before receiving an honorary academic title, stressed “a new world order is forming and taking the place of the older one”, characterized by “real multilateralism, maximum synergy, solidarity and dissociation from unilateralisms”.

And the epicenter of the new world order, he asserted, is Asia.  

It was quite heartening to see the Iranian president eulogizing the Ancient Silk Road, not only in terms of trade but also as a “cultural bond” and “connecting different societies together throughout history”.

Raeisi could have been talking about Sassanid Persia, whose empire ranged from Mesopotamia to Central Asia, and was the great intermediary Silk Road trading power for centuries between China and Europe.

It’s as if he was corroborating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s famed notion of “people to people exchanges” applied to the New Silk Roads. 

And then President Raeisi jump cut to the inescapable historical connection: he addressed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which Iran is a key partner.

All that spells out Iran’s full reconnection with Asia – after those arguably wasted years of trying an entente cordiale with the collective West. That was symbolized by the fate of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal: negotiated, unilaterally buried and then, last year, all but condemned all over gain.

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