For the past six decades, US-Saudi relations have been the subject of worldwide attention, with the two nations maintaining a strategic partnership, which has developed into a delicate diplomatic balance that ensured both sides’ interests, and which has developed due to the intersection of interests. Consequentially, this alliance has remained firm despite changes in American presidents and Saudi kings. For instance, Washington depends on the kingdom’s oil and its leadership role in the Islamic and Arab worlds, while Riyadh relies on the US to help in stabilising regional security and assist in maintaining its legitimacy as a major player in the Middle East.
A few weeks ago, however, the world witnessed the Saudi King and Crown Prince hosting a number of vital summits with China’s President, Xi Jinping, as part of efforts to improve Saudi cooperation with Beijing and to look forward to a new phase of partnership. Many consider these summits to embody a new reality and a historical turning point for the Middle East region, which has long been seen as an exclusively American-oriented focus of geopolitical influence, especially due to the USA’s strong military presence. Meanwhile, the tense relations between Riyadh and Tehran show another aspect of the emerging Saudi-Chinese rapprochement. The Sino-Saudi summits also serve to indicate the seismic changes underway in international relations toward the multipolar world desired by China, Russia, and other countries. Therefore, the main question here is, how did this Chinese-Arab rapprochement affect the US and Iran’s policies and their relationship with KSA?
The impact of the summit on Saudi-Iranian relations
A few days after the Chinese president’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an Iranian diplomat revealed new efforts by Tehran to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and reopen embassies. The official Iranian state news agency quoted the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, as saying that the regional summit on Iraq, held in Amman on December 20, might be a starting point for the resumption of Saudi-Iranian bilateral talks.
The Iranian announcement was not a coincidence, but followed the issuing of a joint statement signed by China’s President and the Saudi King, in which they urged Iran to cooperate in the controversial nuclear issue and to avoid interfering in the affairs of regional countries. During his visit, Xi also signed another joint statement with the governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council supporting the United Arab Emirates in its dispute with Iran over three islands.
The blind spot in the Iranian request is that both sides, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, are fully aware that this dialogue is unlikely to produce favourable, or even tenable, consequences. Iran realised that the Saudi-Arab-Chinese tripartite rapprochement is the beginning of Iran’s diplomatic isolation, and thus has been exerting itself to send positive messages to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in recent days.
This being the case, one can raise the following questions: What are the objectives behind Iran’s calls for dialogue and the reopening of embassies? Would this be done to ease tensions in the region, especially in Yemen, which is considered the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s backyard? I don’t think so!
In reality, there are several reasons behind Iran’s proposals, with Tehran using this issue as a gambit in the game of geopolitical chess that characterises its approach to relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Iran often used Game theory in its geopolitical dialogue to predict potential outcomes for scenarios in various fields, simulating a series of real-world, strategic situations through sequential games to predict the decision-making processes. The goal of Iran’s use of Game theory is to analyse the potential outcomes of the Saudi-Chinese summit, the China-Arab States Summit and the China-GCC Summit in order to make better-informed decisions and acquire a better understanding of the potential risks and rewards for each option. For example, Iran’s strategists will simulate the impact of Chinese-Arab relations on the Iranian regime more than the impact of Western-Arab relations. Consequently, Iran believes that China’s distancing itself from Iran will harm not only economic interests, contrary to the Western model, but also weaken the structure of the Iranian regime.
Both Riyadh and Tehran know that the dominant strategy for Iran in negotiations is a zero-sum game which it prolongs as much as possible in its regional relationships, with Iran making the choice that benefits it most while ensuring that the other countries gain zero. Iran is aware that its call for regional dialogue and goodwill with Saudi Arabia is a kind of ‘political football’ which cannot achieve acceptable benefits or even tenable results; in reality, Iran’s goal through this proposal is to provoke the Arab Gulf states. Tehran knows that Saudi Arabia will reject this proposition, but by doing so, it puts the ball in the Arabs’ court.
The impact of the Saudi-Chinese summit on US-Saudi relations
As everyone can see, the KSA is certainly not disregarding its historical ties with the United States of America. Certainly, despite Riyadh’s efforts to expand its international alliances beyond its existing partnership with the West, the Saudi-Chinese summit took place while Saudi relations with the Democrat-led US administration are witnessing tensions, especially over the issue of human rights, the war in Yemen, and Riyadh’s support for oil production restrictions ahead of the recent November midterm elections in the United States.
The coded message that Saudi Arabia sent to its ally, the United States, is directly related to the regional events that form the basis of the longstanding Saudi-American relationship. Saudi Arabia is calling for American support to stand up to Iran and to Tehran’s role in undermining the security of the region, which completely contradicts the Kingdom’s economic plans. Significantly, Saudi Arabia is calling on America to stand up against Iran over its support for the Houthi militias in Yemen and their use of missiles to attack Gulf countries. More significantly. this Iranian support is intended to enable Iran to seize control of the security of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which would enable Iran, if Houthi rule could be stabilised in Yemen, to control the security of the Kingdom in the future.
Thus, the Houthi domination of Sanaa is a pivotal point in the current tensions between Saudi Arabia and the US under the incumbent US President Biden’s administration. Saudi Arabia sees Yemen as its backyard, meaning that it is natural for Riyadh to be affected by regional events and instability given the geographical proximity between the two countries. Yemen’s vital geopolitical importance to the Kingdom means the nations have maintained close relations since the 1960s. Despite the critical importance of these factors in Saudi regional policy, the Biden administration does not seem serious about confronting Iranian policy, which has harmed the interests of US allies in the Middle East.
Therefore, Riyadh seeks to convey two messages, the first of which is directed at Democrats in the United States of America, emphasising the necessity of consolidating relations by preserving the interests of both sides and especially of confronting Iran’s belligerent policies in the Middle East, as well as its nuclear program. The second message, which is directed at Iran, states that due to its destructive policies in the Middle East, Iran will be cut off from China and isolated from the Eastern Bloc. As a result, it seems that, despite the Chinese interaction, with Beijing declaring that the summit was China’s “largest ever diplomatic initiative” with the Arab world, this visit will have a greater impact on security matters related to the Middle East than on international or economic interests. Additionally, the summit might also put pressure on the US to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia in order to maintain its competitive edge in the ME.
By Mostafa Hetteh, a researcher at Dialogue Institute for Research and Studies(DIRS). Hetteh tweets under @mostafahetteh