A well-placed shot at the imperial dreams of Britain and France, the Suez Crisis of 1956 USA And Soviet Union as the ultimate arbiters in the volatile and oil-rich Middle East. After the collapse of the USSR, critical news about the region came almost exclusively from Washington (the only notable exception being the Russian intervention in Syria), whether it was a declaration of war or peace initiatives. The first category includes the two Bush wars against Iraq, son and father, and his invasion NATO in Libya. As for the second, we have and say: reconciliation between Egypt (Anwar Sadat) and Israel (Menachem Begin) after secret talks at Camp David with US President Jimmy Carter as mediator, in 1978; the signing of the Oslo Accords by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Yitzhak Rabin in Washington, organized by Bill Clinton in 1993; a Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, again overseen by Clinton, in Washington a year later; a Palestinian road map brokered by Bush’s son in 2003; even Donald Trump has had his own harvest with the Abraham Accords signed in 2020 at the White House by the leaders of the Emirates, Morocco and Israel.

This time, however, the big news we heard late last week did not come from Washington, but from Beijing: after secret talks in the Chinese capital led by senior diplomat of the host country Wang Yi, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani and Saudi National Security Adviser Mohammad al-Abien signed an agreement to restore normal diplomatic relations. This is a major geopolitical upheaval, as the rivalry between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia has played a central role in all the conflicts of recent years in the Middle East, from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen.

To be sure, the rivalry between the two main rivals in the Persian Gulf has deep roots and is not going to die down overnight. However, the impact of the ongoing recession will no doubt be significant in the wider region. First of all, in Yemen, where since the end of 2014, outside the lens of the Western media, a horrific civil war (essentially a Saudi-Iranian proxy war) has been raging, which has claimed the lives of about 380,000 people. Since the Saudis are paying a huge price for not being able to win, rather than endure repeated shocks from pro-Iranian Houthi rebel attacks on their oil facilities, they have every reason to want to heal this wound. The same is true for Iran’s leaders, who have to contend with a collapse in the currency amid massive social unrest and hope that Riyadh will stop fomenting uprisings against the regime in regions inhabited by the Sunni minority.

The main beneficiary of the Beijing agreement will be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who will quickly return to the Arab League, from where he was ostracized by the Saudi Arabia-Egypt-Emirates Sunni bloc. On the contrary, the deal sent a chill through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hoped that the Saudis would soon not only recognize his country, but also take their place in the anti-Iran front that the Americans are trying to build.

A new, multipolar world is being proclaimed by the Beijing agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, and heralding major changes in the Middle East.

The main thing, as the French Le Monde emphasized in its editorial, is that “the normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia marks the arrival of a multipolar world,” while China is not content with economic diplomacy, but openly claims to be a big world. force . In its previous historical cycle, the Asian giant followed in its foreign policy the taoguang yanghui doctrine, the legacy of Deng Xiaoping, which is summed up in quotation marks like “keep your cool, keep your head low, take no initiative, but stand firm.” After Xi Jinping became China’s most powerful leader since Mao, the slogan has now become Xin Xing (new model), which practically means that China’s old clothes have become too tight, while at the same time a more ambitious and more active foreign policy is needed. . its level of economic power.

Seen in this light, the successful mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia (which coincided with Xi’s re-election for a third consecutive term at the annual National People’s Congress) was only the beginning, the first step that gave substance to the Chinese initiative. global security, which was announced last month. The next, more difficult step will be China’s mediation of peace in Ukraine, starting tomorrow with Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow and his meeting with Vladimir Putin (followed by a phone call with Vladimir Zelensky). Meanwhile, two multilateral organizations in which China plays a leading role are on a trajectory of expansion and strengthening: the military Shanghai Pact, which includes Russia, India, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and Iran and Saudi Arabia. Arabia and the famous BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), on whose doors Argentina, Iran and Saudi Arabia are already knocking.

Pact AUKUS

The biggest ships meet the biggest storms, and China will not escape this fate. On Monday, at a naval base in San Diego, California, US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, implemented the AUKUS anti-China pact they announced in September 2021. All three Anglo-Saxon leaders have agreed to equip Australia with U.S. nuclear submarines in the first phase and start building a new generation of nuclear submarines in the second phase in order to maintain the preponderance of weapons in the Indo-Pacific zone, where the main field of global geopolitics seems to be shifting into the 21st century. . Not far from San Diego, on the islands of southern California, a major US Navy landing exercise recently took place, the scenario of which concerned the US-China conflict over Taiwan.

The standard justification for all this in Washington is China’s growing militarism and revisionist behavior. Of course, the Chinese leaders are not saints, but the facts and figures are stubborn: China has three aircraft carriers and the US has 11, they spend a third of their military spending and have a quarter of the aircraft of their main competitor, and have only one military base in Djibouti against 750 American bases in 85 countries of the world. Even in its immediate environment, it does not feel safe, because, unlike the US, protected by two oceans and secure borders with Canada and Mexico, China has Japan, South Korea and US-armed Taiwan on its side. The simple truth is that no hegemonic power in history has stood idly by watching the rise of a dangerous competitor, and America with any leader in the White House will be no exception.