The MbS reset

The Arab press hasn’t buzzed like this since al Qaeda (AQ) hijacked the so-called Arab Spring in Libya and Syria, resetting American interference in the region as CIA routed millions of its war-chest dollars to same Islamist militias, and their offshoots, that it fought in Iraq to support its puppet regime in Baghdad.

Syria is central to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis that’s long been a thorn in the side of Washington’s principal Mideast allies, after all. They fund, train and provide fighters for the on-ground resistance to Israel’s occupation. And they form the main front against the Saudi-dominated GCC alliance.

So, the opportunity to pit Sunni guerillas against a largely Shi’a grouping seemed a godsend for Washington, even if it meant endorsing, bankrolling and arming minority-hunting, head-chopping, heart-eating zealots that were billed as its main enemy in the war on terror. It would weaken Syria, drain Iran and defang Hezbollah just when the historic Arab-Israeli embrace was due to play out.

Yet a few Arab journalists and Middle East correspondents have noted how this script began unravelling a few years after King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud took the throne. And now the sudden China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal is all the rage. But did it really happen suddenly? And is Beijing its only driving force?

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), the de facto Saudi ruler, is considered the main architect of the Saudi-led intervention against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen; in 2015, when he was still deputy crown prince and also held the defence portfolio.

In May 2017, just before he became crown prince, he ruled out any rapprochement with Iran, saying, “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia… Instead we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

Yet by April 2021 he had completely changed his position, publicly saying that he sought “a good and special relationship with Iran… We do not want Iran’s situation to be difficult; on the contrary we want Iran to grow and to push the region and the world towards prosperity.” This was just when Saudi Arabia’s flagship oil and gas company, Aramco, was broadening its relationship with China. “Ensuring the continuing security of China’s energy needs remains our highest priority – not just for the next five years but for the next 50 and beyond,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in March 2021.

Beijing had signed a landmark “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Tehran just two years before (2019), of course, and upgraded its relationship to “strategic partnership” with Riyadh in 2022. It’s also the largest buyer of oil from both countries.

Riyadh had also inched closer to Moscow in the years after the 2014-16 oil price war than at any point since the Second World War. The supply glut, driven by booming US shale oil production, triggered a 70 percent plunge in Brent crude, decimated the Kingdom’s finances and hurt its credibility as OPEC’s leader and swing producer. But Russia cleverly exploited the situation and proposed a coordinated production plan, leading to the formation of OPEC-plus and diluting America’s influence on the oil cartel.

It’s turning out that in these years a number of countries – including Iraq, India, Russia and especially China – recommended direct, behind-the-scenes talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And surprisingly MbS agreed after tension peaked in 2019, when Yemeni fighters claimed a rocket attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility.

Iran’s General Soleimani, who was killed by a US missile attack at Baghdad airport in January 2020, was apparently there to lead the first of these parleys when he was eliminated.

Things are changing very fast in the Middle East. A successful Saudi-Iran thaw will further diminish American influence, embolden China as well as Russia – GCC countries did not participate in the UN vote against the Ukraine war, after all – and complicate normalisation with Israel when the latter is also imploding because of Netanyahu’s desperation to hold on to power and clip the wings of the country’s judiciary.

The first test will be de-escalation in Yemen, even though critics aren’t exactly holding their breath. Still, both sides want a way out, with the Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan highlighting just last week, in Moscow, how urgent it was to “find a way to have a permanent ceasefire in Yemen.”

If they can pull it off, the future will be very different for the region; and beyond. It will soften the geopolitical premium on crude prices, blamed on this rivalry that often triggers confrontations and rattles the oil market. It could also lead to a united stand against Israel, perhaps even finally push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the right direction.

And it will benefit countries like Pakistan, where sectarian proxies have stoked religious extremism and carried out large scale killings for decades just because of the battle of domination between the two great powers of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

MbS had a controversial start, especially because of the suffering and famine caused by the Yemen war and the widely condemned murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – which the CIA pinned squarely on him. But he’s also central to the slow, though very limited, liberalisation of the radical right-wing, quintessential mukhabarat state.

And he’s carving a fresh foreign policy for his country and the region that closely follows Riyadh’s calls. This is not just pushing it away from the US, it is also entrenching Saudi Arabia in the emerging bloc that is challenging US dominance; and even dares to trade oil out of the dollar.

Indeed, the MbS reset has been a while in the coming, pushed by countries whose interests are increasingly aligned, and – even though it’s too soon to tell – could well take the Arab world in a very different direction.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023