WASHINGTON (AP) – In a matter of days, Saudi Arabia has struck blockbuster deals with the world’s two leading powers – China and the United States.
Riyadh signed a China-brokered deal to restore diplomatic ties with its nemesis Iran, then announced a massive deal to buy airliners from US-maker Boeing.
The two announcements spurred speculation that the Saudis would make their mark as the dominant economic and geopolitical force with the flexibility to play Beijing and Washington against each other. They also assign China an unusual leading role in Middle East politics. And they raised questions about whether U.S.-Saudi relations – which have been mostly chilly for the first two years of President Joe Biden’s administration – have achieved détente.
But as the Biden administration takes stock of the moment, officials balk at the notion that developments amount to a shift in the dynamics of US-China competition in the Middle East.
The White House scoffs at the idea that the big plane deal signals a significant shift in the status of the government’s relations with Riyadh, after Biden slammed early in his presidency the Saudis’ human rights record and the Saudi-led move by the OPEC+ oil cartel had criticized cutting production last year.
“We look forward to ensuring that this strategic partnership truly supports our national security interests in every way we can, there in the region and around the world,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. Saudi relationship. He spoke after Boeing announced this week that the Saudis would buy up to 121 planes.
But China’s involvement in facilitating a resumption of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the big Boeing deal — one the White House has endorsed — have put a new spin on Biden’s roller-coaster relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman .
As a nominee for the White House, Biden vowed that under his watch, Saudi rulers would pay a “price” for the 2018 assassination of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s leadership. More recently, after oil cartel OPEC+ announced it would cut production in October, Biden promised “consequences” for a move the government said would help Russia.
Now Washington and Riyadh appear determined to move forward, at a moment when China is at least attempting more assertive Middle East diplomacy.
According to the White House, Saudi officials have kept the US updated on the status of talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia on resuming diplomatic ties since they began almost two years ago. Significant progress was made in several rounds of earlier talks hosted by Iraq and Oman well before the deal was announced during the country’s solemn National People’s Congress in China last week.
Unlike China, the US does not maintain diplomatic relations with Iran and was not involved in the talks.
The Iran-Saudi relationship has historically been strained, marred by sectarian divisions and fierce competition in the region. Diplomatic ties were severed in 2016 after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi embassy and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, swore “divine vengeance” for the execution of al-Nimr.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier this week that China is rowing “in the same vein” with its work to quell tensions between Gulf Arab states, which have been waging proxy wars in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq for years Direction”.
“We think that’s positive in that it promotes what the United States is doing in the region, which is de-escalation, de-escalating tensions,” Sullivan said.
But privately, White House officials are skeptical about China’s ability and desire to play a role in resolving some of the region’s most difficult crises, including Yemen’s long, disastrous proxy war.
Houthi allies with Iran seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition armed with US weapons and intelligence entered the war in 2015 alongside the Yemeni government-in-exile.
Years of inconclusive fighting led to a humanitarian catastrophe and brought the poorest nation in the Arab world to the brink of famine. Overall, the war killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14,500 civilians, according to The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
A six-month ceasefire, the longest in the Yemen conflict, expired in October, but finding a lasting peace is one of the government’s top priorities in the Middle East. US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking is visiting Saudi Arabia and Oman this week to try to build on the UN-brokered ceasefire that has brought a measure of calm to Yemen in recent months, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Beijing jumped into the Iran-Saudi talks at a time when the fruit was “already ripening on the vine,” according to one of six senior administration officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to allow for the private White House deliberations discuss . The Iran-Saudi announcement coincided with Chinese leader Xi Jinping being awarded a third five-year term as president.
The official added that if China can play an “enhancing role” in ending hostilities in Yemen, the government would see it as a good thing. But both the White House and Saudi officials remain deeply skeptical about Iran’s intentions in the Yemen war or, more broadly, as a stabilizing force in the region.
According to government officials, China, which has a seat on the UN Security Council, has so far shown little interest in the Yemen conflict, Syria or the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Still, this week Xi urged China to play a bigger role in managing global affairs after Beijing achieved a diplomatic coup with the Iran-Saudi deal.
“It has brought a positive element to the landscape of peace, stability, solidarity and cooperation in the region,” China’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN Geng Shuang told the UN Security Council on Wednesday. “We hope that this will also create favorable conditions to improve the situation in Yemen.”
Administration officials said Beijing has shown modest interest in reviving the seven-party nuclear deal with Iran – of which it is a signatory – from which President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018. The Biden administration suspended efforts to revive the nuclear deal last fall after protests erupted in Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict dress code for women.
To be sure, China – a major buyer of both Iranian and Saudi oil – has steadily increased its regional political clout. Xi traveled to Riyadh in December and received Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing last month.
But Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, said Xi’s call to be a more active player on the international stage would force Beijing to change its approach dramatically.
“China’s diplomatic initiatives were based on one thing: money,” said Yu, who served as China policy adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Trump administration. “They made friends in Africa and Asia, but it was mainly about the money. This type of transactional business does not create a lasting friendship.”
Not every step China takes to delve deeper into the Middle East necessarily harms the United States, noted Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat and a frequent critic of Saudi Arabia.
“But it’s probably true that China should shoulder some of the cost of securing the oil, which … frankly, is probably more important to them than the United States in the long run,” Murphy said. “I think China has benefited from being a free rider on US security investments in the region for a long time.”
The White House is not particularly concerned about the Saudi reorientation towards China at this time for a number of reasons, including that the Saudis’ entire defense system is based on American weapons and components, administration officials said. The officials added that it would take the Saudis at least a decade to transition from US weapons systems to Russian- or Chinese-oriented systems.
Saudi Arabia’s reliance on US-made weapons systems and the American military and commercial presence in the kingdom — some 70,000 Americans live there — have played a big part in the relationship over the years, which has weathered difficult moments, said Les Janka, a former President of Raytheon Arabian Systems Co. who lived in the Kingdom for many years.
It would take “an incredible amount of activity to mine, given the reliance on American weapons, American technology, American training and everything that goes with it,” Janka said.
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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.