Beijing Mediating Saudi-Iran Talks

The geopolitical spotlight has again turned to the Middle East, where big powers have competing interests. The relative decline of American influence in the region has presented a chance for China to engage with regional actors through enhanced diplomatic efforts. China’s diplomatic maneuvering brought Iran and Saudi Arabia together at the same table for the first time in recent history. Historically, the struggle for regional influence and the role of dominant entity of the Islamic world fueled the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, one that is compounded by the Shia-Sunni schism.

Prior to these developments, the security landscape of the Middle East was determined by the United States’ unchallenged hegemony which managed relative influence, competing interests, and clashing ideologies from inside and outside. However, in the 21st century players in the region introduced assertive regional policies to bolster their influence while outmaneuvering the United States’ dwindling leverage. In this context, China has increased its diplomatic presence in the region and positioned itself as a viable alternative for the traditional regional actors. Contrasting the United States which engineered a regional order rife with contradictions and divisions, China’s diplomatic endeavors seek to integrate the region into a broader mechanism of shared governance and stability to enhance global energy supply and trade relations.

China’s presence in the geopolitical balance in the Middle East has empowered it to broker a detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Reconciliation without the involvement of the United States signified a break from the past, and that rendered obsolete the security guarantees offered by the United States to its allies. The diplomatic re-engagement between the two regional competitors announced in Beijing on March 10 reflects China’s diplomatic vision of a shared future and peaceful rise in the international system.

This diplomatic achievement can be traced back to a senior Chinese diplomat’s vision of China’s regional role in the Middle East. It also signifies China’s growing role and the establishment of its legitimacy as a heavyweight diplomatic mediator capable of fostering peace between antagonistic states. It also suggests that China’s abilities as a credible peacemaker could bring calm to places like Yemen, Libya, and Syria, among others. This diplomatic success has given China a strategic option to de-escalate conflict that threatens the stability of the global energy supply.

An important factor was that China’s neutrality in the region endowed it with the capacity to talk to all sides without ideologically lecturing them. China’s diplomatic principles of non-interference and non-alignment have bolstered its position with the necessary credibility to broker peace between Riyadh and Tehran. This approach testifies to China’s growing influence as an extra-regional actor in the Gulf. Unlike the United States, China’s diplomatic strategy is simple and straightforward. It seeks stabilization of the global energy supply to secure China’s requirements, accompanied by an open catalog for regional actors to choose whatever economic cooperation they need.

China’s continued formal diplomatic engagement and economic ties with Tehran provided the necessary confidence. Similarly, Saudi’s pivot to China was marked by the first China-Arab States Summit and the first China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit. The summits was characterized by agreements on energy, technology, aerospace, automotive investment, and various other areas, resulting in increasingly close economic and security relations between China and the Middle East. Likewise, this agreement offers Iran the required legitimacy to open to the Arab world and pave workable solutions for conflicts in regional flashpoints such as Yemen and Lebanon. For Riyadh, calming regional tensions makes Muhammad bin Salman’s Vision 2030 more achievable.

Furthermore, China’s global governance concept is based on the notions of a community with a shared future for mankind and international partnerships characterized by win-win outcomes, mutual consultation, and joint development. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank proposed by China both focus on infrastructural development, interconnectivity, and economic security. Those initiatives and institutions align with China’s strategic partnerships with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates. In this framework, China seeks to foster economic development and industrialization rather than picking favorites in regional rivalries to gain a geopolitical advantage like certain superpowers. Consequently, the substance of China’s diplomatic policy is pragmatic cooperation. This approach has increased China’s diplomatic appeal and soft power in the context of the BRI.

Pakistan has also desired normalized bilateral relations between Riyadh and Tehran. This welcomed development achieved in Beijing bolsters Pakistan’s strategic vision for the Middle East and its own foreign policy. It will allow Pakistan the necessary strategic space to maneuver without antagonizing either Middle Eastern giant. And as an essential participant in the BRI, Pakistan can invest significant trust in the China-proposed global governance model that emphasizes regional stability and economic development, two requisites Pakistan seeks now as much as ever. Pakistan’s historical and bilateral ties with China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia make the development even more beneficial to the country.

China’s growing role in the Middle East signals the emergence of a post-American world order and a new era of Asian engagement designed primarily by economic security and a shared governance model for development. The geopolitical landscape of the Middle East is experiencing a new strategic flux, redefining structural logic and rearranging itself around new organizational principles. The geopolitical equation has been altered by many larger structural shifts involving the weights and relative positions of specific regional and extra-regional actors. China will continue to contribute its insights and proposals to realizing peace and tranquility in the Middle East and play its role as a responsible major country in this process.

The author is a Pakistani expert on the Belt and Road Initiative.