For the past fifteen years, foreign-policy experts have been urging Washington to pivot away from its focus on the Middle East, and instead to turn its attention to confronting Beijing. While the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all, to various extents, heeded this advice, the recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia—brokered by China and concluded in Shanghai—suggests that it hasn’t worked as promised. U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East, Michael Doran argues, is instead ceding this crucial region to Xi Jinping’s ambitions. Specifically, the U.S. has demonstrated that it is unwilling to defend its allies against Iranian aggression:
[T]he Middle East plays a special role in Xi’s plan to create a Beijing-led global economic system, one that will run parallel to the American-led system. To succeed in this effort, he must protect China from the advantages that America enjoys due to the power of its capital markets, its leading position in advanced technologies, and the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency. Offsetting these advantages requires access to the vast capital reserves of the Gulf states, whose economies are booming.
In the Middle East, the United States cannot outcompete China economically. The Chinese are now the world’s largest purchaser of oil from the region, and they are rapidly expanding their exports to the Middle East. As a great-power patron, the only thing that distinguishes the U.S. from China is its military might.
But the Biden team refuses to check Iran militarily. In that case, what good is Washington to Saudi Arabia? Why wouldn’t Riyadh turn eastward? In contrast to Washington, Beijing at least wields influence in Tehran. It is eager to export drones and missiles, it won’t hesitate to provide assistance with a civilian nuclear program, and it won’t deliver sermons on human rights. Best of all, Xi’s grand economic strategy compels him to woo Riyadh.
America’s refusal to build an anti-Iran bloc is delivering the Middle East to China.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-china-saudi-iran-talks