Global Research, March 13, 2023

The Geopolitics of the Iran-Saudi Arabia “Rapprochement”: What Are the Implications for Pakistan?

By Andrew Korybko

The Iranian-Saudi rapprochement presents Pakistan with some unexpected challenges that it arguably would have been in a much better position to deal with had last year’s post-modern coup not taken place. The past 11 months have crippled its capability to respond to game-changers such as this one, which means that it’ll probably miss out on the opportunities connected with this black swan event while remaining at risk of sliding further into regional isolation.

The Chinese-mediated Iranian-Saudi rapprochement is unquestionably a positive development for all members of the international community apart from the US and Israel, both of which have a stake in dividing-and-ruling West Asia by indefinitely perpetuating those two’s rivalry. Pakistan had previously been victimized by their competition so it makes perfect sense why it praised their unexpected reconciliation, but it might also struggle to adapt to the new grand strategic reality that it created.

On the one hand, Pakistan is now no longer tacitly conceived by either of them as an object of rivalry against the other, within whose territory they previously competed with their counterpart by proxy. This will in turn relieve enormous pressure on that country at one of its most sensitive security moments in decades characterized by unprecedented political polarization, rising terrorist attacks from Baloch sub-nationalists and the TTP, and an ever-worsening economic-financial crisis.

On the other hand, however, there’s an inadvertent chance in the short-term that the Baloch aspect of its security challenges might worsen. The Cradle, which is a popular Alt-Media outlet with exclusive sources known for their reliability, cited an unnamed individual who was part of the Beijing-based negotiations to report that one of the hidden security clauses agreed to was that Riyadh “pledges not to fund organizations designated as terrorists by Iran, such as…militants operating out of Pakistan.”

This can be understood as a reference to Jundallah, an extremist group that operates out of Pakistan’s Balochistan region allegedly with the tacit approval of that country’s military leadership and which has been previously accused by Iran of being a Saudi proxy. Upon being cut off by Riyadh and out of work, its fighters might join other extremists like the TTP or sub-nationalists like the BLA unless Islamabad successfully detains them first or begins their disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration.

It can’t be taken for granted that the post-modern coup regime that came to power last April will do so, however, since it’s irresponsibly redirected a significant share of the security services’ attention from preemptively addressing those threats to persecuting their peaceful political opponents. That’s one of the reasons for the upsurge of terrorism across the country in the past 11 months, and it’s unlikely to be rectified in a timely enough fashion even if the political will was present (which it isn’t) to deal with this.

Failure to proactively address the abrupt rise of unemployed anti-Iranian militants could further exacerbate Pakistan’s already difficult security challenges in the coming future, thus contributing to its cascading crises that are pushing that geostrategically positioned country closer to the brink of chaos. Not only that, but it can no longer take the scenario of Saudi bailouts for granted either since the Kingdom appears poised to invest more in Iran than in Pakistan going forward.

The Iranian-Saudi rapprochement will unlock the North-South Transport Corridor’s (NSTC) maximum potential by connecting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to this promising series of Eurasian megaprojects between Russia and India that run through the Islamic Republic. This is the official assessment of influential Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky, which he shared with his country’s publicly financed international media flagship TASS. 

 Pakistan can “piggyback” on these projects by using them to comprehensively enhance its connectivity with Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia, which would align with the geo-economic grand strategy promulgated by former Prime Minister Imran Khan, but economic stability and political will are the prerequisites. Both are presently lacking, however, which reduces the chances that it’ll benefit from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC’s participation in the NSTC anytime soon.

With the Kingdom likely to focus more on mutually beneficial Iranian investments than on dumping billions into seemingly never-ending Pakistani bailouts that haven’t ever brought it anything in return, Islamabad will predictably become more dependent on the US-controlled IMF. China will always provide the bare minimum required to keep Pakistan afloat in the worst-case scenario, but even it seems to be getting cold feed nowadays for a variety of reasons, thus meaning that US influence might further grow.

About that, last year’s post-modern coup restored American suzerainty over Pakistan to a large degree, which now makes that country a regional anomaly in the geopolitical sense considering the broader region’s drift away from that declining unipolar hegemon. The very fact that previously US-aligned Saudi Arabia patched up its seemingly irreconcilable problems with Iran as a result of Chinese mediation reinforces this factual observation. Pakistan now stands alone as the broader region’s only US vassal.

That country’s military leaders will predictably try to leverage this to their benefit, both personally as well as in terms of what they believe (whether rightly or wrongly) is the national interest, but the power asymmetry is obviously in the US’ favor and therefore places Pakistan at a supreme disadvantage. It’ll thus probably continue being exploited and led down the counterproductive path charted by last year’s post-modern coup due to Pakistan’s desperate hunger for the carrot of American financial aid.

Just like international perceptions of Pakistan will continue moving in a negative direction due to its status as the broader region’s only US vassal, so too will domestic ones of its post-modern coup regime as a result of the counterproductive path that its patron will continue leading it down. Political polarization will expectedly spike with uncertain consequences for stability considering the brutal methods that the authorities have employed for persecuting peaceful protesters.

Their perception management efforts will also be dealt a blow by the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement since The Cradle’s previously mentioned source also reported that neither party will “engage in any activity that destabilizes either state, at the security, military or media levels.” This is only relevant in the Pakistani context to Saudi Arabia’s clandestine funding of anti-Iranian propagandists who coincidentally happen to be the post-modern coup regime’s loudest supporters.

The authorities turned a blind eye to the activities of these literal foreign influence agents as a quid pro quo for their support against the opposition, but now this increasingly bankrupt country is forced into the dilemma of either having to foot the bill for their propaganda or have them shill for someone else. Levers of pressure might be exploited to coerce them into remaining loyal despite the cut in their pay if the regime replaces the Saudis as their boss, but others might still work elsewhere or even emigrate.

For all the reasons shared in this analysis, the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement presents Pakistan with some unexpected challenges that it arguably would have been in a much better position to deal with had last year’s post-modern coup not taken place. The past 11 months have crippled its capability to respond to game-changers such as this one, which means that it’ll probably miss out on the opportunities connected with this black swan event while remaining at risk of sliding further into regional isolation.*

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/unexpected-implications-iranian-saudi-rapprochement-pakistan/5811826

Global Research, March 13, 2023

China’s Initiative:
Iran and Saudi Arabia Are Back on the Diplomatic Track.
Ending the Atrocious War in Yemen?

By Peter Koenig

The Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Shia Republic of Iran have agreed – in a China brokered deal – to re-establish diplomatic relations within the coming two months.

Question is, will this new Riyadh-Tehran diplomacy bring an end to the horrendously atrocious war in Yemen? The worst killing and maiming of a most impoverished people in the last hundred years. Maybe this was a key objective of China’s in bringing these two countries back together.

Background

Diplomatic relations between the two countries broke down in January 2016, when Iran’s Foreign Minister claimed that Saudi warplanes had “deliberately” targeted Iran’s Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city.

As a precursor to that event, on 2 January 2016, the Saudi Government executed 47 people throughout Saudi cities, one of them was a prominent Shia scholar. Iranian protesters about the execution ransacked and set ablaze the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.

This prompted the Saudi Sunni Foreign Minister to cut diplomatic ties with Shia enemy Iran. In hindsight and knowing what we know today, this rather harsh action by the Saudis, smells like provoked and directed by the powers that be – the US and the UK; those who also are the principal arms suppliers to Riyadh for their war against Yemen.

The Riyadh-Tehran conflict is, in fact, a triangular conflict involving Yemen in the first degree.

In September 2014, the Houthis, a humanitarian rebel group, invaded and took control of Sana’a to oust then Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, whose government was controlled by Riyadh. The Shiite Houthis have links to Iran.

The Houthis also had a history of rising up against the Saudi Sunni government which for years has played an influential role in Yemen’s internal affairs.  

Yemen, being situated in an extremely strategic geographic location overseeing the Sea of Arabia, where 70% of the world’s energy is shipped through, it is likely that the Saudi influence on Yemen is “peddled” by the Pentagon, which has several military bases in Saudi Arabia.

They are Washington’s counterpart – a solid military protection – to the US deal with the Saudi King in 1971, that Saudi Arabia, leader of OPEC, would henceforth trade all hydrocarbons in US-dollars.

This resulted in the world being flooded by petro-dollars. It became an important cornerstone in the US-dollar-hegemony over the world.

Yemen’s so-called civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis took control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. The Houthis had – and still have – the support of a large majority of the Yemeni people.

Image: Brendan Bell-Taylor, Action Corps Idaho organizer, and Laura Burton protest the war on Yemen in front of the Idaho State Capitol, in Boise, on January 25, 2021, as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen. Sen. Jim Risch, U.S. senator from Idaho, is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Source: twitter.com]

The Saudi Butchery in Yemen and the Worldﾒs Apathy

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia, presumably leading a large coalition of nine countries from West Asia and North Africa, launched a “military intervention” – a war against Yemen – which officially is still called, as of this day, the Yemeni Civil War.

The official version is that the Saudis reacted to deposed Yemeni President Hadi’s call for military support to bring him back as the head of Yemen and to get rid of the Houthi movement.

Looking back, and knowing what we know today, the real instigators of this atrocious war against one of the world’s poorest countries, are the US and the UK. They finance the Saudis and supply them with weapons to literally slaughter Yemenis. Predominantly suffering are women and children.

They also starve Yemenis to death by closing vital ports for shipments of food and other life-necessities, the port of Aden and the Red Sea port of Hudeidah, the second largest port in the country.

The US is again fighting a proxy war. Sounds familiar? One of many precursors to the war in Ukraine. How many more are to follow before the killer-empire falls?

This eight-year-old conflict in Yemen is a confrontation between the internationally recognized government, which is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, and of course, the US and the UK, against the Houthi rebels, supported by the people of Yemen and by Iran.

The country’s humanitarian crisis is said to be among the worst in the world, due to widespread hunger, disease, and attacks on civilians.

According to the UN, over 150,000 people have been killed in Yemen, as well as an estimated more than 227,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine and lack of healthcare facilities due to the war. Yemen’s population as of March 2023 is estimated 31.6 million.

There are no reliable statistics about the death toll of this war. But it is estimated that at least a third of the victims are women and children. When it comes to starvation, mostly children are concerned.

According to an Oxfam spokesperson, “The armed conflict in Yemen has exacerbated discrimination and inequalities.Women are, in general, struggling from unequal access to services and resources, as decision-making is often made by men in their communities.”

Looking forward

Will this new diplomatic agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, mediated by China over several days in Beijing, bring the long overdue peace to Yemen and the necessary aid funding to rebuild Yemen’s infrastructure and social rehabilitation?

Both countries, Iran and Saudi, committed to “non-interference” in each other’s internal affairs, according to a joint statement by Saudi, Iranian, and Chinese officials.

Representatives of both countries also said that they would resume a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001 and would work to enhance “regional and international peace and security.”

Does this latter include peace in Yemen?

The regional conflict between Riyadh and Tehran is further exacerbated by the two countries supporting opposing sides also in Syria, while Iran backs the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, along with the US and Israel, consider Hezbollah a terrorist group.

China’s initiative to bring these two Middle-East countries again together and in peace is multi-faceted. It is a major achievement. Iran and Saudi Arabia are among the world’s largest oil and gas producers. Their common interests go way beyond joint OPEC membership.

Both are keen in detaching themselves from the western ever-more chaotic, sanction-prone, fraudulent economic system, intending to shift eastwards – into eastern coalitions led by China and Russia.

Both countries would like to join the BRICS alliance, which is in turn hoping to be admitted to the China-Russia led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has during the last year or so provided strong support to the BRICS-plus, an indication that the BRICS association with eastern groupings and eventually full integration is welcome.

The BRI may also become instrumental in rebuilding Yemen – which would be a positive development for Yemen, plus a quasi– invitation to move towards eastern alliances.

Beijing’s role in brokering the agreement is a major diplomatic win for China, but also for Iran, Saudi Arabia and hopefully also for Yemen. It is a true win-win solution.

While Iraq and Syria conflicts are still lingering on, there are prospects that the dynamics created by China through the renewed diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran, may eventually bring lasting Peace to the Middle East.

*

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion ﾖ An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; andﾠﾠco-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-initiative-iran-saudi-arabia-back-diplomatic-track/5811806
 

 

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