The Iran-Saudi Arabia deal is a cooling agent, not a cure
Daniel DePetris
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Most of us are predisposed to bad news coming from the Middle East, but the week ended on a positive note. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region’s two heavyweights aside from Israel, struck a China-brokered agreement to normalize their diplomatic relations.
The two nations will reopen embassies in each other’s capital within the next two months. The U.S. was cautiously optimistic about the deal, even if it wasn’t involved in brokering it. This follows a previous brokering effort by the Iraqi government. Those talks began in April 2021 but were riddled with stop-and-start delays and a long seven-month pause due to an Iraqi political crisis. To Baghdad’s credit, the mediation never fully died.
But the two governments had their own reasons to keep talking. Playing nice with Iran was a good way for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to demonstrate to Washington that he was maturing in his role and getting more pragmatic. For Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the diplomatic strategy was, in part, a way to peel off (or at least attempt to peel off) Arab states from the U.S.-led containment effort. Regardless, the budding accord is noteworthy for the simple reason that the Saudis and Iranians have been hostile toward each other for a very long time.
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Still, it would be a mistake to call this an earth-shattering diplomatic agreement. It won’t resolve all of the security disputes that have made the Iran-Saudi relationship such a toxic one. As Gregg Carlstrom observed, “You would think, from some of the commentary here over the past few hours, that China has brokered a comprehensive agreement to resolve all outstanding issues between Iran and Saudi Arabia, rather than a transactional deal to maybe reopen embassies and marginally lower tensions.”
The entire list of outstanding issues between Saudi Arabia and Iran is too long to list. But some of the more significant disputes involve Tehran accelerating its nuclear program, the proxy war in Yemen (which will enter its ninth year later this month), the political competition in Iraq, the political paralysis in Lebanon, and the festering ulcer that is Syria. The latter may be the easiest to manage; the Saudis, who once threw significant cash toward Bashar al Assad’s armed opponents, are no longer advocating the strongman’s ouster and have openly acknowledged that the isolation strategy against the Iranian-supported regime in Damascus isn’t working.
The nuclear file is on the other end of the spectrum, however. If related diplomacy remains frozen and the Iranians continue churning out near weapons-grade nuclear fuel, any other attempts at normalization may not matter for the Saudis. Tactical understandings are possible in Yemen, but there is only so much the Saudis and Iranians can do to resolve a bitter conflict fueled more by intra-Yemeni political, economic, social, and regional schisms than by outside meddling.
In short, this isn’t a peace treaty or even a de-escalation agreement. Ultimately, it’s a mechanism to bring Iran-Saudi relations on a more predictable track. That’s a good thing in its own right. But folks who conclude that a new dawn has risen should take a breath.
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Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.