Riyadh realises it cannot trust Iran
In return for the US guaranteeing its security from Iran, helping it develop a civilian nuclear programme and granting it unfettered access to its arsenal, which was part of a demand to be met, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Saudis declared their willingness to sign the Abraham Accords and a peace treaty with Israel on 9 March. This was done through China as mediator.
The Saudis announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran the day after the US failed to respond or offer an alternative. Everything had changed dramatically in a matter of hours. After nearly 15 months of negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, during which several countries, including China, Iraq, Oman, Russia and the US, assisted them, a final agreement was reached in Beijing. As relations between the two nations intensified after seven years of ‘diplomatic ice’, it may be worth preserving stability in a region that has experienced decades of conflict during the Cold War era.
China, which had never taken a major role in the Middle East, sponsored the new rules of the game in response to Washington’s silence. Arab nations were unprepared. Two years after Biden wanted to get out of the Middle East to confront China in the Far East on its own territory, Arabia allows China to enter the Middle East through the main entrance. The Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer the enemy and, to make matters worse, Arab nations could support it. The deal could also jeopardise efforts to formally link Israel and Saudi Arabia, which are top priorities for US policymakers in the region.
However, the resumption of diplomatic relations between the Saudis and Iranians may not affect the strategic landscape in the Middle East. As they move forward with plans to expand the Abraham Accords, analysts advise US officials to support any efforts to defuse tensions.
Previous attempts at détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran had failed. The two countries attempted to heal their wounds through a variety of exchanges and diplomatic actions in the 1990s after tensions erupted in the 1980s. Beijing was not being encouraged; Washington was. Saudi Arabia at the time was content to contain Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait to reinforce the image of Islamic unity at home, a brutal war of attrition with Iraq that also had a significant negative impact on Iran. Diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established in 1991. Seven years later, in 1998, Iran’s President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani paid a ten-day state visit to Riyadh amid considerable arrogance. The détente was short-lived, however, and the countries quickly resumed their previous positions as sectarian violence in Iraq escalated and Iran continued to advance its nuclear programme.
However, as long as Iran commits to improving its nuclear capabilities, the two nations will be locked in a strategic conflict that can only be resolved through engagement and diplomatic communication. If this is the case, the restoration of diplomatic ties represents more of a brief pause than a significant change in the regional strategic landscape. When hostilities end, opportunities arise for both nations. Although the agreement is publicly known as a bilateral agreement, most of its clauses are aimed at ensuring regional stability in the Middle East and Gulf. Rather than fighting to the detriment of the region, the agreement is intended to allow the two sides to have a direct diplomatic conversation.
Ever since it became clear a year ago that nuclear negotiations with the US were not moving forward, Iran has been desperate to break out of its diplomatic limbo. For the past seven months, Tehran has had to contend with nationwide protests that have recently become more intense. The collapse of the currency and the worsening economic crisis are additional problems currently facing the Islamic Republic. These engagement prizes, however, have no bearing on the configuration of the Middle East chessboard. Iran remains a revisionist power that has benefited from regional unrest, supporting well-armed extremist groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, as well as having considerable influence in Iraq.
Moreover, the emergence of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran does not presage a new era of Middle East peace or a hostile posture towards US interests. The latest information on normalisation does not change much if Saudi Arabia and Iran are still engaged in a struggle for dominance that began as an ideological conflict. In order to contain Iran and promote regional stability, analysts advise the US to maintain its current strategy of assembling a regional coalition of conservative forces. This already powerful coalition needs to be strengthened in light of the official expansion of the Abraham Accords, which would normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
A flurry of diplomatic activity in the months leading up to the signing of the agreement suggested a gradual opening on the Iran-Saudi Arabia front. Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks on 7 December 2022 while visiting the Saudi state, leading up to the final Iran-Saudi Arabia meeting in Beijing on 9 March. During this trip, he also sent a proposal on Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud met as foreign ministers at the Baghdad II Conference in Amman on 20 December 2022. Javad Karimi Ghodoosi, a member of the Foreign Policy and National Security Commission of the Islamic Council, noted in a conversation with Asr Iran, that the US gave the Iranian executive a signal that it was willing to resurrect the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from which the US disengaged in 2018, as a sign of rapprochement between North America and Iran.
Despite concerns, hopes remain that the Abraham Accords will move forward. Additionally, hours before the announcement of the Riyadh-Tehran deal, details were released on what would be necessary to normalise relations with Israel. Riyadh is aware that it cannot trust Iran, that Israel only wants to re-establish diplomatic ties, and that the US will be watching. However, it depends on how committed they are to the Arab Peace Initiative. The Saudis are manifestly considering progress with Israel.
Moreover, Tehran reportedly made it clear that Washington did not consider the Iranian opposition in exile a serious threat to the Islamic Republic, despite months of widespread anti-government protests inside Iran. The Chinese initiative was raised once again when President Ebrahim Raisi went to Beijing in February 2023. Raisi noted that there may have been some coordination between Washington and Beijing to encourage a thaw between Tehran and Riyadh. According to Riyadh, during his visit to the Saudi kingdom in December 2022, President Xi Jinping raised the idea of additional talks. Iran claims that Raisi was informed of Saudi Arabia’s request for China’s assistance in restarting negotiations with Tehran when he visited the Chinese capital.
It was suggested that the deputy foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia meet in Beijing in February 2023 to discuss the Chinese initiative that had emerged in December 2022. In response to a request from Riyadh for high-level discussions between senior security officials, Tehran sent Ali Shamjani, the secretary of the National Security Council, to China. The heads of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence and Iran’s national security services participated in meetings that lasted a week. The meetings were successful, direct and open, Shamjani announced. The agreement that followed concerned mainly bilateral relations, but procedures were said to have been established with the aim of advancing cooperation in the Muslim world and the Middle East.
According to Iranian sources, the issues were fair. These sources added that the restoration of diplomatic relations did not mean a change in either party’s strategy or the destabilisation of any state. In the end, the agreement did not immediately elevate regional archives to the highest priority, but improved bilateral ties could lead to less conflict and more stability.
In this context, with Israel having had to come to terms with Moscow because of its presence in Syria, Israel needs to control the jihadists in some way, which is why it has had to come to terms with Russia. At the same time, there has been a distancing between Saudi Arabia and the United States, who suspended and controlled the amount of arms exported to Arabia, whose relevance for the Saudi state is very important in the war with Iran in Yemen, which provoked unease among the Saudis, which, together with questioning from the White House and criticism for the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, distanced Saudi Arabia from the United States. Joe Biden, backtracking, tried to reach an understanding with Mohammed bin Salman, but it did not have the desired effect for the US administration. Another factor that weighs heavily is that China has enormous power in the region; although it has no military bases, it is the main investor. While the US was waging war in the Middle East, China was doing business. China was the main investor in Afghanistan when US troops were occupying the country. The same happened in Iran.
Another factor to take into account is the internal problem facing Israel, which in turn sees Iran as a threat to its national security, so any rapprochement between Tehran and Saudi Arabia, an important US ally, is likely to be seen as a threat to Israeli interests. The occupying state’s covert actions against Iranian interests are well known and include cyber attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. It stands to reason, therefore, that Israeli attempts to thwart reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely aimed at provoking conflict between the two nations.
This is a contentious issue because a considerable part of the people living in the Arab nations that signed the Abraham Accords oppose normalisation with Israel. One of the goals of the agreement was to further isolate Iran and Syria, which have a strong anti-Zionist stance, and to pressure other Arab nations to recognise apartheid and reach a peace agreement with Israel. Recent diplomatic shifts show that some of Israel’s former adversaries are reconciling.
In 2021-2022, Iraq hosted five rounds of talks between Tehran and Riyadh. The fifth round of talks, which took place in Baghdad in April 2022, was intended to pave the way for future talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Iraq continuing to mediate for both sides throughout the year. The main contracts for the modernisation of Iraq’s oil industry were from Chinese companies, as in Syria. Chinese investment is significant, and it is also the main buyer of oil, which gives it leverage. These factors combined make Saudi Arabia produce such a turnaround.
Nevertheless, the problems between Iran and Saudi Arabia have not been resolved, as they are problems that go back decades of conflict and rivalry. This will not change overnight. But the very fact that a change of course is being conceived, which has been in the works for a long time – more than 15 months. Although the change is slow, both Saudi Arabia and Iran understood that the best thing to do at this juncture was to reach an understanding that would take pressure off both countries, which, with China’s mediation, has had the effect that is reflected in the agreements that are to be carried out.
The key issue is whether this could be the beginning of the unification of the Muslim world, because the division of the Muslim world into different branches of Islam is a phenomenon that has had a lot of political gravitas and if the opposite were to happen, it would mark a before and after and would be a major geopolitical event.
Saudi Arabia, like Iran, has applied to join the BRIC grouping of Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa. If these oil powers were to join, we would be talking about the world’s strongest economic union with the greatest influence. In addition, the levels of collaboration between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are part of OPEC+, is a factor to be taken into consideration. The main motive of these agreements is to negotiate energy resources in local currency, which is the main goal of Russia and China in an attempt to circumvent Western sanctions.
Americas Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra
Para líderes mediterráneos y atlánticos, quiere ser el puente de comunicación, información y entendimiento entre culturas.
Dirección: Calle Claudio Coello, 10. 28001 Madrid. España
Teléfono: +34 91 219 63 84
Email: [email protected]