Published: 14 March 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Israel's dream of forming an Arab alliance against Iran was shattered on Friday with the news that China had brokered the restoration of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia
The dramatic announcement is likely to redraw the regional map of friends and foes and will have global reverberations. The agreement provides Iran with much-needed legitimacy in the Arab world and could lead to further deals with Arab states like Egypt, pave the way to end the war in Yemen, offer a workable solution to the crisis in Lebanon, and even lead to a resumption of negotiations to save the nuclear deal.
The Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will force the United States to re-evaluate its standing in the region. After all, it was China – not Washington or Moscow – that was able to reassemble a complex political constellation traditionally under American purview.
Saudi Arabia and Iran broke-off ties in 2016 after the Saudis executed the prominent firebrand Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, triggering reprisal attacks on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. A year earlier, Saudi Arabia launch an all-out, brutal assault on the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, opening the door through which Iran could intervene in another regional conflict, alongside its operations in Iraq and Lebanon.
China has become a major a strategic ally of both Saudi Arabia and Iran, with whom it signed a $US400 million economic cooperation agreement over 25 years. But both China and Iran know that fulfilling the potential of their alliance depends on signing a new nuclear deal. China has entered the fray as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia to construct an alliance that serves the interests of all three without needing the services or assurances of the US. More importantly, China is taking the place of the US as an economic and strategic power in the region. A power that Israel has little influence over.
Former prime ministers Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett immediately warned of its implications for Israel’s strategy against Iran as they used the moment to attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Italy when news of the deal broke.
The rapprochement signals the “collapse of the regional defence wall that we started building against Iran,” Lapid said, adding that it “reflects the complete and dangerous failure of the Israeli government’s foreign policy.”
Several Palestinian organisations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, released statements supporting the deal.
