China’s Mideast peace deal sidelines U.S.

WASHINGTON — Finally, there is a peace deal of sorts in the Middle East. Not between Israel and the Arabs, but between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have been at each other’s throats for decades. And brokered not by the United States but by China.

This is among the topsiest and turviest of developments anyone could have imagined, a shift that left heads spinning in capitals around the globe. Alliances and rivalries that have governed diplomacy for generations have, for the moment at least, been upended.

The Americans, who have been the central actors in the Middle East for the past threequarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change. The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player. And the Israelis, who have been courting the Saudis against their mutual adversaries in Iran, now wonder where it leaves them.

“There is no way around it — this is a big deal,” said Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a nonprofit group in Washington. “Yes, the United States could not have brokered such a deal right now with Iran specifically, since we have no relations. But in a larger sense, China’s prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the U.S. has been able to achieve in the region since Biden came to office.”

President Joe Biden’s White House has publicly welcomed the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and expressed no overt concern about Beijing’s part in bringing the two back together. Privately, Biden’s aides suggested too much was being made of the breakthrough, scoffing at suggestions that it indicated any erosion in U.S. influence in the region.

And it remained unclear, independent analysts said, how far the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran would actually go. After decades of sometimes violent competition for leadership in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, the decision to reopen embassies that were closed in 2016 represents only a first step.

It does not mean that the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and the Shiites of Iran have put aside all of their deep and visceral differences. Indeed, it is conceivable that this new agreement to exchange ambassadors may not even be carried out in the end, given that it was put on a cautious two-month timetable to work out details.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt now at Princeton University, said the shifting dynamics represented by the Chinese-brokered pact still pose a challenge to the Biden administration when it would prefer to focus elsewhere.

“It’s a sign of Chinese agility to take advantage of some anger directed at the United States by Saudi Arabia and a little bit of a vacuum there,” he said. “And it’s a reflection of the fact that the Saudis and Iranians have been talking for some time. And it’s an unfortunate indictment of U.S. policy.”