China the broker & Joe the joker
FRIDAY’S biggest headlinegrabbing news was the bust of Silicon Valley Bank following a run on its deposits. The collapse was the second-largest bank failure in the nation’s history and fears of a domino effect rattled stock markets.
Seen from the long run, however, that was probably not the most important event of the day. The honor goes to the announcement that Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations.
Given their long proxy war in Yemen and fierce sectarian hatred, the sudden agreement (right) was stunning. Even more so because China brokered it.
As The Wall Street Journal said in a headline that captures the implications: “Accord marks diplomatic victory for Beijing in a region where U.S. has long dominated geopolitics.”
Even The New York Times, usually a mouthpiece for the Biden administration, echoed the grim assessment, saying China’s role displayed President Xi Jinping’s “ambition of offering an alternative to a U.S.-led world order.”
Let that sink in — a new world order, one where China is the leader. And it’s happening before our eyes.
Even if this were an isolated incident, China’s ability to bring the warring parties together would show its growing influence. But far from being unique, the power move marked another instance of China taking big steps toward its goal of world domination.
To cite a few examples, it is helping Russia in Ukraine, squelching freedom in Hong Kong, threatening an invasion of Taiwan and now outflanking the United States in the Mideast. Its tentacles reach to Africa as well as Latin and South America.
The pattern underscores that the spy balloon China brazenly floated over America’s heartland was no accident, nor was it incidental.
It was a message. Somebody ought to wake Joe Biden and tell him that, on his watch, our country is fast becoming the world’s No. 2 superpower.
Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, sees the Iran-Saudi deal as a loss for America on three fronts.
He told the Journal: “It demonstrates that the Saudis don’t trust Washington to have their back, that Iran sees an opportunity to peel away American allies to end its international isolation and that China is becoming the major-domo of Middle Eastern power politics.”
In truth, most of the West has been caught off guard by the speed of China’s aggressive moves. A 2019 assessment by the European Council on Foreign Relations stated with smug assurance that “China still has a limited appetite for challenging the US-led security architecture in the Middle East or playing a significant role in regional politics.”
Yet Europe’s lack of understanding underscores that American leadership is crucial, and that its absence can be disastrous.
For China, the Iran-Saudi deal reflects President Xi’s chess-like approach to the modern Great Game and cements sources of oil and gas for China, which already gets 40% of its oil from the Persian Gulf region.
When you factor in China’s enormous purchases of energy from Russia, the communist regime has now secured relations with three of the world’s largest producers of coal, oil and natural gas.
The deal also helps integrate Iran back into parts of the global trading system and further degrades the leaky economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe. As such, it will help save a regime rocked by domestic protests, largely over women’s rights, and boost its agenda in the region — all while expanding China’s roster of allies.
Meanwhile, in Israel, the deal threatens efforts to unite Gulf Arab nations against Iran, which remains committed to wiping the Jewish state off the map.
The pact immediately set off a blame game, with an unidentified member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pointing at both the Biden White House and the previous Israeli government, according to The Times of Israel. It quoted the source as saying “There was a feeling of American and Israeli weakness, so Saudi Arabia turned to other channels.”
Tracing Saudi-Iran pact
The official claimed the SaudiIran talks began in 2021 during the brief tenure of Israel’s unity government and when Biden was trying to sweet talk Iran into a new nuclear deal. Recall, too, that Biden came into office determined, as he said during the campaign, to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” because he believed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of a critic, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
It was during those days, the Israeli official said, that the Saudis turned to China for help.
A large part of Biden’s misreading of the region was a blind determination to undo everything Donald Trump did. Biden never embraced the Trump-era Abraham Accords, which, with the right diplomacy, likely could have been expanded to include Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations, including in Africa.
Moreover, just as Biden was stuck in a time warp with Iran, he failed to grasp that most Arab states are frustrated with Palestinian rejectionism when it comes to a resolution with Israel. In another turn backwards, he tried to revive the failed formula of a two-state solution based on land-for-peace, and insisted no peace between Arabs and Jews was possible without it.
As Robert Gates famously noted, being wrong is nothing new to Biden, who shows no ability to learn from mistakes or history.
Of course, when it comes to the president’s repeated weakness toward China, it’s impossible to ignore his role as the “big guy” in his family’s lucrative influence peddling schemes. As I noted, Xi Jinping knows everything the Bidens did and how much money they got from China in what former family partner Tony Bobulinski believes was an intelligence operation targeting Joe Biden.
In that case, look at the facts this way. If the president is truly innocent and hasn’t been compromised, why is he so passive as China usurps America’s role on the world stage?