On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.
Xi is, in fact, on his way to Russia, possibly as soon as next week, with a 12-point peace plan -- ostensibly to see if he can pull off the same wizardry with Ukraine, but more likely to nail down plans to seize Taiwan.
China as the world's new power-broker anywhere, especially in the Middle East -- until Biden squandered America's alliances there -- is conceivably a seismic turning point: possibly the beginning of China fulfilling its dream of replacing the US as the dominant superpower in a new world order.
For the Biden Administration, this is a blow for which it has only itself to thank.
In addition to ignoring Saudi security concerns about Iran's escalating nuclear weapons program, Biden also let Iran's terrorist proxies off the hook. He removed Yemen's Iranian-sponsored Houthi terrorist group from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February 2021, and refused to put it back even after the Houthis resumed missile and drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates, as well as more attacks on the Saudi Arabia.
Is it any wonder, then, that in the vacuum the US created, the Saudis felt pushed towards China and Iran? What, after all, was their alternative?
It is likely that the Saudis were hoping that the Americans, even at the last minute, would pledge completely to terminate their negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, which permits Iran unlimited nuclear weapons.
China and other aggressors also cannot avoid seeing America's non-stop ineptitude, whether the focus in the US military on teaching critical race theory and "climate change" rather than on how to win or deter wars; billions for "climate change," which must give China, which is building "six times more coal plants than other countries," a good laugh, while the US military budget has been in a steady net-decline, outpaced by Biden's 6% inflation. Someone has not been minding the store.
Will more countries be willing to reject an international order based on democratic values -- not to mention the world's reserve currency -- of the US?
On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.
Xi is, in fact, on his way to Russia, possibly as soon as next week, with a 12-point peace plan -- ostensibly to see if he can pull off the same wizardry with Ukraine, but more likely to nail down plans to seize Taiwan.
China as the world's new power-broker anywhere, especially in the Middle East -- until Biden squandered America's alliances there -- is conceivably a seismic turning point: possibly the beginning of China fulfilling its dream of replacing the US as the dominant superpower in a new world order.
For the Biden Administration, this is a blow for which it has only itself to thank.
From the outset of his presidency, President Joe Biden completely deprioritized the Middle East: "If you are going to list the regions Biden sees as a priority, the Middle East is not in the top three," a former senior national security official and close Biden adviser told Politico in 2021.
Biden then proved this highly unwise policy to anyone in doubt with his disastrous Afghanistan exit, creating a power vacuum in the region and demonstrating to allies everywhere that they could not rely on the US.
Biden then decisively cleared the path for China with his calamitous policies toward Saudi Arabia, creating another power vacuum. Enter Xi.
Saudi Arabia for decades relied on the US for its security. Since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ascended to the second-most important position in the kingdom in 2017, he has expressed interest in loosening human right restrictions somewhat and seeking economic diversification. Then came Biden, campaigning for the presidency with the promise to make Saudi Arabia "pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are." He threw in gratuitously that there was "very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia."
Making matters worse, the Biden administration has continued relentlessly to try to revive the flawed 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal" with Iran -- which is the pinnacle of "social redeeming value?" The Trump Administration had withdrawn from the deal after mountains of evidence kept turning up that Iran had reportedly been cheating "since day one." Meanwhile the Biden Administration kept completely ignoring the legitimate fears that Saudi Arabia had of a nuclear Iran.
"Washington and the West have not been serious about the region's security since concluding the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015," wrote Tariq Al-Homayed, a leading Saudi journalist and former newspaper editor following the Chinese-brokered deal.
As recently as January, when International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi made it clear that "only countries making bombs" are enriching uranium at Iran's level, Saudi Arabia's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir repeated the Saudi concerns:
"I believe that Iran has an obligation to give up its nuclear program. I believe that Iran must be in compliance with the terms of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, if it wants to be a member in good standing of the international community needs to respect international law, needs to respect international order."
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Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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