Pak Sahafat – The Hill website in a report stated that the agreement between Tehran and Riyadh is a great progress in international diplomacy, and discussed five key points among them.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency’s report on Sunday, citing this news website, the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia with China playing the role is a great progress in international diplomacy, which became on air on Friday.
According to this media, the three countries of Iran, Arabia and China announced the news of the Tehran-Riyadh agreement on Friday and said that Iran and Saudi Arabia, as two important countries in the Middle East, will resume their diplomatic relations once again.
According to the article posted on Hill’s website, this agreement, which occurs after the two countries cut ties in 2016, will definitely have lasting effects throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Hill has discussed five key points about China’s mediation between Tehran and Riyadh to reach this agreement;
The tension between the two regional powers of the Middle East will decrease
According to this report, although the escalation of tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2016 eventually led to the closure of the two countries’ embassies, the problems that Tehran and Riyadh have are deeply rooted in history and religion.
Throughout history, Saudi Arabia has been Sunni and Iran is Shiite. This especially after the revolution of 1979 and the religious leadership of Shia Islam under the supervision of Ayatollah Khomeini and the support of other Shia groups in the region prompted Saudi Arabia to strengthen its Sunni relations with Iran.
According to this media, since then, although Iran and Saudi Arabia have never directly gone to war with each other, they have been in proxy conflicts. Saudi Arabia supported Baghdad during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war, and in recent years, it has faced Iran in the civil war in Syria and Yemen, which supported the Shiite groups of these two countries.
China’s growing influence on the world stage
According to the author of this article, another factor in the agreement is the fact that China acted as a mediator between Tehran and Riyadh, and the agreement between the two countries was reached after four days of unbroadcast talks in Beijing. For years, China has been trying to challenge America’s role as a superpower, and therefore its success in this role weakens America’s position in the region.
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The future of Iran-Saudi Arabia relations; what do regional analysts say?
Undoubtedly, despite the strained relations it has had with Iran since the 1957 revolution, America could not play the role of a mediator in this. But China, on the one hand, as one of the buyers of Saudi oil, and on the other hand, as one of Tehran’s close friends, has close relations with both countries. Therefore, some experts have considered this agreement as an indication of China’s greater participation in diplomatic interaction with the Middle East.
“Jonathan Panikoff”, a senior member of the Atlantic Council think tank, called China’s role in the Tehran-Riyadh agreement a warning to Washington that if it abandons the Middle East and abandons long-time allies, that vacuum will simply be filled by China.
The third important point in the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, from the point of view of this American news website, is the emergence of complications in the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
According to experts, the proximity of Tehran and Riyadh can make it more difficult to form an international agreement, which is the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Israel has recently increased the level of relations with several Arab neighbors through the Abraham Pact; the agreement that led to the normalization of Israel’s relations with the UAE and Bahrain in 2019. Immediately after that, Sudan and Morocco established diplomatic relations with Israel. Therefore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called for normal relations with Saudi Arabia.
It may lead to the strengthening of the Assad government in the Syrian civil war
After the announcement of the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Syrian government praised it and considered this agreement to be the result of stability in the Middle East. But according to the observers, this agreement could have a strategic advantage for Bashar al-Assad and lead to strengthening his presence in the heat of the civil war in this country.
Some experts, pointing out that Assad has already retaken large parts of the country from the rebels, believe that any Saudi withdrawal in support of the Syrian rebels after the agreement with Iran can help him retain power.
The Tehran-Riyadh agreement will help end the war in Yemen
According to this American news website, the civil war in Yemen is one of the conflicts that have pitted Iran and Saudi Arabia against each other. This eight-year war, which has caused a huge humanitarian crisis, has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions of people in hunger and disease.
Therefore, the agreement of the two key supporters of the conflicting parties can lead the government and the rebels to reach an agreement to end the violence in Yemen.