Russian, Chinese, and Iranian warships participate in a joint military drill in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 21, 2022. Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images
For decades, the United States played the primary role of powerbroker and peacemaker in the Middle East.
That reality is fading fast.
A History of Peacemaking By the US
President Jimmy Carter’s historic and Nobel Prize-winning effort in managing a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979 was pathbreaking. That agreement remains in place to this day.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton’s Israel–Jordan peace agreement expanded border security for Israel and peace to the region. That agreement also remains in place, although it’s questionable in light of the war in Gaza.
In 2020, President Donald Trump’s historic Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan and set the table for further accord with Saudi Arabia and others.
Is Beijing a Peacemaker?
In March, Beijing’s mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran signaled its arrival as a great power in the Mideast. It was the first time that China has played a significant diplomatic role in the region that, for the past 70 years, has been dominated by the United States or Russia.
The Beijing-brokered Iran–Saudi Arabia agreement is notable not only as a first for China—which is a very big deal—but also as an acknowledgment by both parties that China’s influence is recognized, sought, and valued by both Tehran and Riyadh. Undoubtedly, other regional powers, particularly those that seek the destruction of Israel, will seek to take advantage of Beijing’s new diplomatic gravitas to offset U.S. influence and assistance to Jerusalem. (More on that in a moment.)
A Growing Military Presence in the Region
That new reality represents a sea change in the great power dynamics of the region and, arguably, of the world. The world still runs on oil, after all, and both Saudi Arabia and Iran supply the world with a lot of it. What’s more, the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are religious, geopolitical, and trade adversaries, and yet both nations looked to China to help resolve some of their differences, demonstrates Beijing’s growing influence in the region.
Members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army attend the opening ceremony of China's military base in Djibouti. STR/AFP via Getty Images
But it isn’t just Beijing’s diplomatic influence that’s growing in the region. It’s expanding its military presence in the region as well. For example, China’s naval presence in the Middle East is second only to that of the United States. That fact isn’t lost on anyone in the region and sends a clear message to the United States and the world of China’s intentions to challenge U.S. naval supremacy, not just in the South China Sea.
What’s more, the Chinese regime has established a large military base in Djibouti, a so-called logistics center for its overseas military operations in the region. As China’s first major military base, it has recently conducted live-fire exercises for the first time. It’s also quite strategically located near the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea. It also happens to be positioned to block access to the Suez Canal.
However, the Biden administration has recently been briefed that Beijing wants to add a military base in Oman, a typically neutral country in the region. The move may be an effort to counter U.S. influence because the United States has an Air Force base there, but the actual use of the proposed base is unknown. Communication between Washington and Beijing has been minimal at the time of this writing.
The fact is that China’s expansion into the Middle East has been on the heels of its Belt and Road Initiative in service of its growing energy needs and, ultimately, of its plans to replace the United States as a global hegemon. In short, China’s influence gains in the Middle East come at the expense of U.S. influence in the region.
Why Isn’t the US Mediating?
A few questions come to mind.
Why wasn’t the United States the intermediary between Saudi Arabia and Iran?
Shouldn’t the several billion dollars that the United States has released to the mullahs in Iran over the past years buy us influence in Tehran?
Why is China viewed more positively by most countries in the region as compared to the United States?
Even before the war in Gaza, U.S. favorability was declining in the region in a paradoxical fashion. On the one hand, the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab nations reflected favorably on the United States. But on the other hand, even with peace and prosperity increasing, much of the region viewed the United States negatively under the Trump administration and in clear decline under President Joe Biden.
On the flip side, the Biden administration is finding that its ability to influence events is declining in the region and, with it, the United States’ reputation. Curiously, funneling billions of dollars to Iran, the region’s most aggressive terror state, has failed to buy influence with the Islamic regime.
War Is a Greater Influence Than Peace
What’s more, although nations prefer the Biden foreign policy to that of the Trump administration, more believe that China will impact the future of the Mideast more than the United States will and are behaving accordingly. Therefore, as the war in Gaza continues and the United States backs Israel in the conflict, the Islamic nations of the region are under growing pressure to support Hamas and the Palestinian cause, putting the peace and prosperity that has been brokered by the United States at risk.
In other words, the cause of war in Gaza is proving to be greater than the cause of peace in the region.
The Chinese regime is leveraging that opportunity. Beijing, which has backed Hamas despite trade relations with Israel, wishes to be viewed as the superpower for the developing world, which includes many Arab nations in the Middle East, as well as to retain its partnership with Russia, which also supports Hamas in the conflict.
Whatever the outcome of the war, it’s apparent that communist China’s influence in the Mideast is rising and that of the United States is declining.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
James Gorrie
Author
James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.
