The Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has catapulted new geopolitical tensions into the Middle East. The event has drastically threatened the security matrix in many countries, particularly those with substantial Muslim populations. It has dramatically turned up the volume in the global social media ecosystem, amplifying a narrative war and spreading fear of hate crimes against Jews and Muslims.
Until the beginning of October, the Middle East narrative was dominated by the Abraham Accords—the first Arab-Israeli peace deal in 26 years; the Middle East QUAD—known as I2U2—between India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); and the India, Middle East, Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which was announced during the G20 September summit in New Delhi.
Overcoming historic geopolitical differences and many decades during which traditional routes were closed due to conflict, IMEC would provide a new economic corridor, linking India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Israel, and the EU through a series of shipping ports and rail routes. This corridor is seen as a contrast to China’s Belt and Road initiative.
Along with these developments, there was also a buzz about a second QUAD being forged in the Middle East between India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the United States.
However, with Hamas terrorists paragliding into Israel, the carnage that followed has rekindled a long-drawn historical conflict, raising grave challenges for peace based on mutual understanding in the Middle East.
Saudi–Iran Rapprochement: An Anti-American Coalition
“The Chinese gain in two ways: [The war] acts as a broad distraction in Chinese strategic interest. It supports China’s creation of an anti-American coalition [in the Middle East] where Iran is broadly the supporter of Hamas,” Dr. Kaush Arha, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Center for Technology and Diplomacy at Purdue, told The Epoch Times over the phone.
A highly placed source in New Delhi, who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity, said that the Israel–Hamas conflict has impacted Saudi–Israeli normalization, which is now postponed for the foreseeable future.
“Hence, [it] strengthens China’s hand in Saudi–Iran rapprochement. Second, the proposed IMEC is hit, as the rail line was to connect to Haifa, Israel. U.S. prestige in the Middle East [is] hit and China gains. Will Israel attack Iran? Very likely, in my view,” the New Delhi source said.
Traditional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia decided to end years of hostility and reestablish relations, in a deal brokered in March by China. In a statement jointly issued by Beijing, Tehran, and Riyadh, the leaders of the three nations talked about respecting the sovereignty of states and non-interference in internal affairs.
Notably, four days after the Hamas attack, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi discussed the ongoing conflict in their first telephone conversation after the resumption of their diplomatic ties.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, believes that politically, Riyadh can’t ignore the civilian cost to the Palestinian people.
“And certainly, the fact that the war has temporarily put on hold Saudi Arabia’s normalization plans with Israel ... is going to help prospects for Saudi–Iranian rapprochement, given that Tehran rejects the Abraham accords. It rejects any type of normalization policy of any country in the region toward Israel,” Kugelman told The Epoch Times over the phone.
Without naming China, Mr. Kugelman said that the normalization of Israel–Saudi relations at this stage will depend upon the role that the United States plays in reducing the civilian cost in Gaza. The normalization process between Riyadh and Jerusalem has been hit, but not shut down forever, he feels.
Larger Geopolitics
Hamid Bahrami is an independent Middle East analyst and commentator of Iranian origin, currently living in Europe. Mr. Bahrami told The Epoch Times that the Hamas operation against Israel, and the Chinese response to the situation, should be analyzed within the context of larger geopolitics that have unfolded since the onset of the Ukraine war.“The Hamas operation was carried out under the management of the Iranian regime, with the green lights of Russia and China,” said Mr. Bahrami, adding that oil prices will drop if the Saudi–Israeli relationship is established.
“[A] drop in oil prices will push Russia to a war loss against Ukraine. If this happens, Russia’s defeat would mean China losing a credible ally in countering the West–India axis,” he said. By West–India axis, he is referring to the two new QUADs in the Middle East, as well as IMEC. These all have an India–U.S. partnership at their core.
Prolonging the conflict will further complicate the situation for several reasons, including increased economic and security risks in the EU and the United States, Mr. Bahrami said. Russia and China may attempt to push the United States into a broad conflict with Iran, he said. However, the West is unwilling to enter into a war with Iran and its proxies for multi-faceted geopolitical, economic, and historical reasons.
Iran and Saudi Arabia: Different Positions on the Conflict
Running like a thread behind this whole geopolitical scenario is also the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia take different positions on the war. While Saudi’s interests are best served by a speedy end to the conflict, that’s not the case for Iran, according to Kugelman.“Iran is, of course, a valid enemy of Israel, and certainly is not ruling out the possibility that it would itself get involved in the war,” he said.
Iran has already threatened to intervene if Israel doesn’t stop its onslaught on Gaza. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, told Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, in a meeting in Beirut on Saturday that Tehran will not remain a “silent spectator.” According to Kugelman, this complicates the situation.
“Given that Iran is indirectly a party to the war as a sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah, that makes it difficult to take seriously this notion that the war could more substantively allow Saudi Arabia and Iran to make some significant headway in their rapprochement.”
Iran and China’s close ties also play a role in this situation, according to Bahrami.
“China is gradually trying to play [a] role in the Middle East, as it brokered the Iran-Saudi rapprochement, but it seems it still weighs the dynamics,” he said, adding that Iran is trying to convince China to favor its proxy war. Beijing’s position after the Oct. 7 attack indicates that Tehran is very close to achieving this goal.
China Insists It is ‘Friend to Both’
The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the violence ushered in by the Hamas–Israeli conflict, but didn’t criticize Hamas by name, instead saying that it is a “friend to both” sides in the conflict.“China has no selfish interests on the Palestinian issue and has always stood on the side of peace, fairness and justice,” said Chinese special envoy to the Middle East Zhai Jun, according to a foreign ministry statement detailing his call with an Israeli foreign ministry official last week.
Shortly after the onset of the conflict, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that the fundamental way out of the conflict would happen only after a two-state solution is implemented and an independent Palestine is established. The Israeli foreign ministry, in an official statement, responded that it was “deeply disappointed” by China’s statement.
Mr. Bahrami commented that it’s ironic that Beijing has extensive economic relations with Israel, states that it doesn’t support the kind of violence that Hamas perpetrates, but hasn’t directly condemned Hamas.
“China does not seek to create any conflict in the Mediterranean region. Especially today, when Beijing has included Syria in the One Road One Belt project,” said Mr. Bahrami. However, he added that if West-brokered peace and development threaten its agendas in the region, Beijing will recalculate its foreign policy accordingly.
Burzine Waghmar, an affiliate of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the SOAS Center for Iranian Studies, and the SOAS South Asia Institute, London, told The Epoch Times in an email that Beijing’s non-condemning statements on Hamas reflect both its political culture as well as its geopolitical interests.
Beijing is reluctant to condemn Hamas outright “so as not to upset [the] Muslim world and its own home Maoists, for whom revolutionary Palestinian politics is a noble struggle against imperialism, since Israel was deemed a Western colonial settler state implanted and sustained in the historical region with merely American aid,” Mr. Waghmar told The Epoch Times in an email.
For Chinese communists, as well as the larger left and its global allies, only Afro-Asian nationalisms were laudable and permissible as they were waged against capitalist-imperialist forces. In this communist versus imperialist narrative, the Jews “due to their perceived whiteness” are not extended this privilege, and are expected to assimilate in European societies, according to Mr. Waghmar.
“It remains a chronic blind spot with the left,” he said.
In the days after the war’s outbreak, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sprinted through Israel, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, attempting to prevent a wider war in the region.
By contrast, in a call on Sunday with his Saudi Arabia counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi condemned Israel for innocent civilian casualties.
“Israel’s actions have gone beyond self-defense and it should heed the call of the international community and the Secretary-General of the United Nations to stop its collective punishment of the people in Gaza,” Mr. Wang reportedly told Mr. Faisal.
Mr. Bahrami said that China’s economic interests dictate against a broad war in the region. Chinese statements indicate that since the United States supports Israel, China wants to do a “counterbalance” between Iran and Israel.
“Indeed China just diplomatically repeated Iran’s warnings about invading Gaza. China decided to play a mediation role, as Russia can not do this because of distrust between West–Russia,” he said.
