China breaks into the new world order
As much as the United States has tried to play it down through the mouth of John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brought about by China's decisive mediation, constitutes an unquestionable triumph for China, which thus demonstrates that the old liberal order has ended and the new one is being born.
That the announcement of the agreement came at the same time as the definitive consecration of Xi Jinping as practically China's absolute and eternal leader underlines Beijing's emergence as the great superpower it had aspired to be. What precisely defines it is not only its immense superior strength vis-à-vis other competing countries, but also its undisputed authority to mediate, favour agreements and even impose truces between bitter rivals. In short, to act as a global leader, with interests in virtually every corner and region of the world.
It is true that the United States remains the hegemonic superpower for the time being, but it is also true that China has long aspired to dispute this universal leadership, a quarrel that has been going on since the very dawn of the world, finally codified as the Thucydides Trap, according to which war is inevitable when a power emerges that is convinced of defeating and replacing the previously dominant one. This is how empires have succeeded each other throughout history, especially in the last thirty centuries, with the one obvious exception of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), when the Spanish and Portuguese decided to divide up the world rather than fight it out by force of arms.
Also, as at other similar moments in history, before the direct clash, the powers in dispute for hegemony, especially the emerging one, proceed to intense alliance-building. For many years China has been weaving the network known as the New Silk Road, a set of agreements, treaties and alliances with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular, with which it wants to form a large bloc united by economic interests, but also by an ideological line identified with authoritarianism as opposed to the liberal and democratic order.
Its mediation of the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal has had the immediate translation of displacing the US as the most influential country in the explosive Middle East region. Washington denies that it is leaving the region, but this is not the perception in the Arabian or Persian Gulf. China wants to make its voice heard, which is to say that it is also poised to play a key role. Both Tehran and Riyadh aspire to absolute leadership over the Muslim world, with the Qur'an as the sole and undisputed source of law and, albeit with different ways of applying it, the constitution or guidebook for individual and collective conduct and behaviour.
The agreement substantially changes balances. Iran and Saudi Arabia were also fighting their own Cold War, at least since 2016 when Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran following the storming of its embassy, which was ransacked and set on fire by protesters clearly identified with the Revolutionary Guards, reacting to the execution in Arabia of Shia cleric Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, one of the main agitators against the Saudi monarchy.
In this Cold War, the two have been measuring their forces in other territories in the area, especially in Yemen, where since 2015 Iran has been backing, arming and tele-directing the actions of the Houthi rebels, while Arabia leads a coalition of nine Arab nations that support President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The restoration of diplomatic ties between the Iran of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the iron-fisted Arabia led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is supposed to unblock Yemen's bloody status quo. This is largely what underlies the UN's congratulatory message to China on the success of its diplomatic mediation.
There are also many other outstanding issues, first and foremost the situation in Israel. Israel feels its existence is under constant threat from Iran and never tires of warning that it will not allow Tehran to finally get its hands on nuclear weapons, which it seems ever closer to achieving. In turn, Israel wants Saudi Arabia to join the Arab countries with which it has already established diplomatic relations and with which it is developing the numerous projects under the Abraham Accords.
Prince Bin Salman, according to a leak to The Wall Street Journal, demands in exchange for this future peace treaty that it be allowed to develop its own nuclear programme for civilian use. As further compensation for such a demand, Riyadh would renounce further support for Palestinian claims, which would imply a historic turnaround in its diplomacy, which could be used by Iran to intensify its support and supply of drones and missiles to Palestinian militias.
Until now, all of this has been handled between the actors involved, with the essential mediation, for better or worse, of the United States, while the European Union has acted as a secondary mediator and major provider, or payer, of funds for development and reconstruction. From now on, it seems, China will have to be reckoned with, and very much so, as it currently has a subordinate and aggressive ally: Vladimir Putin's Russia, whose greatest aspiration is precisely to bury the international order that has prevailed until now.