A smoking blow for President Xi Jinping, with the restoration under Chinese auspices of diplomatic relations between these two great enemies, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Either, the signs of appeasement brought by this normalization agreement are fragile, in that it is far from exhausting the rivalry and the conflicts between the two dictatorships. Although, in the specific case of the endless war in Yemen, which has become a quagmire for Saudi Arabia in the face of the Houthis supported by Tehran, we can concretely hope that he will help to achieve a ceasefire. – perennial fire. Which, in all realism, would be welcome, given the terrible humanitarian crisis in which this small forgotten country has been sinking for at least eight years – and continues, it should be remembered, not without the supply of arms and American, French, Canadian military equipment…
For Xi fresh from a third term in the presidency — and therefore more powerful than ever — the breakthrough offers a springboard through which he will enlarge China’s stature in the Middle East and assume a more clearly political role there.
People mocked, not without reason, his “peace plan” for Ukraine. With the Iran-Saudi agreement, Xi sends back the signal that China’s relationship to the world is more than commercial, financial and technological. The Chinese dictatorship thus aspires to the position of “policeman” in a new international order, where the United States seems to be increasingly struggling to assert itself as the one capable of remedying the current disorder. It is striking to note that the laborious “Asian pivot” of the Americans, this enterprise of containment of China whose dikes are not holding up well, is accompanied in the opposite direction by a rise in influence of Beijing in the Middle East. It’s not just that the levees don’t hold; it is also that China is investing in the fields opened up by the American policy of disengagement.
Restoring relations broken in 2016, the Iran-Saudi agreement — with the reopening of embassies and the reactivation of economic and security agreements — immediately responds to a certain imperative of de-escalation for both sides. the other. Under Western sanctions, the Iranian theocracy, facing an unprecedented popular uprising which it suppresses with blind violence, is in serious economic trouble. The Saudi monarchy wants to tear itself away from its stalemate in Yemen, while seeking to distance itself from the United States.
While we must not overplay the implications of this normalization agreement, obtained after two years of secret talks, we cannot ignore the fact that we are witnessing with this reorganization a rapprochement, albeit unstable, between three of the fiercest dictatorships in the world. Three dictatorships which support, with variable geometry, Russia against Ukraine. That Donald Trump did not bury the international nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 and we might not be there — as the United States necessarily has a responsibility in the implosion of international relations in which we are witnessing today.
Either way, it wasn’t funny to hear China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, touting the deal last Friday as “dialogue”, “peace” and “mutual respect”. » when these are three regimes that are completely ignorant, at home and on the international scene, of human rights and democracy.
Coincidence or not, the leaders of the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom were meeting on Monday at a naval base in San Diego to formalize the AUKUS alliance announced in September 2021, this ambitious military-industrial partnership for the production of nuclear-powered submarines intended to oppose China in the Indo-Pacific.
“A historic day,” said Joe Biden, spokesman for this common front of which Canada is not a part. Historic, indeed, since the alliance fits perfectly into the militarist foreign policy of the United States… It will be the pax americana against the pax sinica.