A look at Saudi-Iran relations

 

A look at Saudi-Iran relations

 

 

How are you guys, my curious fellows, for six days, the world's top rival powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have been silently dialoguing in the Chinese city of Beijing for six days and no one has heard of it. But when the video of the talks was released on March 10, it showed Iranian, Saudi, and Chinese diplomats sitting on a triangular table with three equal arms. This three-cornered table was probably so that there would be no impression of who is the senior partner and who is the junior in the negotiations.

All look equal on a table with three identical sides. With no one sitting on one side or being seen to lead, the Chinese, Iranian, and Saudi representatives presented a peace agreement in front of the cameras in a red and green cover. It was an agreement that no one expected. was not doing The deal promised to mend seven years of strained relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This agreement was being worked on for two years, but in the last six days spent in Beijing, only the draft of the agreement was being finalized.

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan also admitted that the backdoor diplomacy had been going on for two years, in which China has finally played the main role. Let me tell you an interesting fact although the name of China is being taken the most in this deal, but in the agreement signed, apart from these three, two other countries are also named. That is, of Iraq and Oman. The text of the agreement and news reports suggest that Iraq and Oman had actually been working on the deal for years. He was worried about the region because of the bad relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Obviously, they can negotiate but for the guarantee, the Iraqi and Omani government was not enough. For this, he needed the guarantee of another country more powerful than them. Which could have been the United States or China or any other country of this level on March 10, it is known that the country that will become the guarantor is China. In other words, China is basically the guarantor in this trilateral agreement and the guarantor of the written words that Iran and Saudi Arabia will follow the agreement as it is. Now let's see what is actually written in this agreement. It is written in the agreement that Saudi Arabia and Iran

Agreeing to resolve their disputes through dialogue and dialogue and improving relations in accordance with international law and the OIC Charter. And they have decided that the two countries will normalize diplomatic relations, which have been broken for seven years, in two weeks at the most, that is, Saudi Arabia will send diplomatic missions to Tehran and Iran to Riyadh. Meaning both will activate their embassies in each other's countries. Then it is also written that both countries will respect each other's sovereignty

And will not interfere at all in each other's internal affairs. Now this is a very important point. This is important because Iran and Saudi Arabia are the countries that have been playing a bloody game since 1989. A game that is suffering the consequences of the whole world and especially the Muslims. We have shown you his story in full detail in Muslim Cold War. In this series you have seen that Saudi Arabia and Iran not only each other They interfere in the internal issues of the country but also in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

So their determination that after today they will not get involved in each other's affairs and proxies is the most important point. Will it be implemented? The answer to this most important question can only be understood if we know what happened seven years ago to end this deal. Iran-Saudi Arabia relations were at a standstill seven years ago when Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric, Sheikh Baqir al-Nimr, in 2016. Sheikh Al-Nimr was a person who was a Saudi citizen but belonged to the Shia sect.

In Saudi Arabia, you know, there is dynasty rule, dynastic rule, dictatorship. In which there is very little difference between dissent and rebellion. So Sheikh al-Nimr used to strongly protest against the policies of the Saudi government and for the rights of Shia areas. He also gave speeches. He was from the eastern region of Saudi Arabia, Al-Qatif, where there are more adherents of his religion, the Shia religion. So their words had an effect, then Iran is just one hundred and fifty kilometers across the sea in front of the eastern region. So, in such a situation, the Saudi kings did not pay attention to Al-Nimr's rebellious words.

They thought that whatever they were doing, they were actually doing it with Iranian support. They are doing to end our kingdom. For this reason, Sheikh Al-Nimr was arrested many times, he was accused of inciting Shia-majority areas to independence, and there were also rumors of torture during detention. But each time they were let off, or given warnings. But when he was arrested and wounded in 2012, he was not released. Instead, they were tried and sentenced to death. Now it happened that there was a strong reaction from Iran when the death sentence was announced.

Both official and public. The Iranian establishment threatened Saudi Arabia that there would be consequences if Baqir al-Nimr was executed. So, friends, partly for this reason and partly because Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was the Saudi king at that time, who was a peace-loving person and a peace-loving person. He also tried to improve relations with Iran. On the contrary, they had done better, so King Abdullah stopped the death sentence of Baqir al-Nimr. Baqir al-Nimr was arrested, but the death sentence was not carried out and he remained alive. Then after his death in 2015 when his brother Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz became the king

So actually there was a change that his son MBS, Muhammad bin Sulaiman emerged as a strongman. They wanted to shed Saudi Arabia's soft power image in the region and project themselves as a starring power. So, one of the actions he took to raise Saudi Arabia as a powerful country was that he took Baqir al-Nimr out of prison and beheaded him. In those days, Saudi-Iran relations were not going well, so it happened during this time. The reaction to this sentence was that thousands of angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Iran.

The Saudi embassy was set on fire and equipment looted. However, the people were saved by the Saudi staff. The road on which the Saudi Embassy was located was also renamed after Baqir al-Nimr. In response, Saudi Arabia ordered the Iranian diplomats to leave Riyadh within forty-eight hours. This means the end of relations between Iran and Saudi Diplomatic relations. Both went back to their respective homes, leaving no room for conversation. This is exactly January 3, two thousand and sixteen. Since then, Saudi-Iran relations have been getting worse and worse.

In Yemen, in Iraq, in Lebanon, and Syria, the proxies of the two countries have been and are fighting each other. Both have been going to any extent to harm each other's interests. Just three and a half years ago in 2019, Yemeni rebels attacked two of Saudi Arabia's largest state-owned Aramco oil refineries. As a result, these refineries had to be shut down for repairs. Saudi Arabia suffered so much that it had to temporarily stop half of its oil exports, which account for five percent of the world's total oil exports.

That is, it was such a big loss and Saudi Arabia, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, blamed it on the Iranian government. It is the work of Iran's security agency to scare these Yemenis and give them a train. The Saudi security officers held a press conference, the pictures and videos of which are still available today, so these were the conditions in which no one thought that Saudi Arabs and Iran can at least move in a better direction through Muhammad bin Sulaiman. Or it is true that people thought that when this theocratic dictatorship of Wilayat al-Faqih is established in Iran.

Till then there can be no peace between the two countries. But now in Beijing, we see that the Trilateral Agreement is in front of us. A pleasant, a very good, a very peaceful thing has happened. Whether or not it will take place for two months, or start, or whatever, we'll see. But what is more important than the closeness of Iran and Saudi Arabia in this agreement is that America is no longer the biggest broker in the world of peace deals and peace agreements. This is a big deal. Until now, America used to guarantee all the big deals that happened in the world

China has not been a civil guarantor of any major treaty in the last 100 years, it is not the sole guarantor of any international peace treaty, at least not in the last 100 years or whatever date you can think of. Well, we don't go too far, just look at the deals of the last century. The Treaty of "Portsmouth" was a peace deal of Nineteen Five, and Nineteen O'Five that concluded a peace treaty between Japan and Russia. Both countries ended the war, although Japan's burden was heavy, but still, both countries signed a peace treaty under the guarantee of American President Vidor Roosevelt.

This is the same president who was also called Teddy. President Roosevelt was also awarded the Nobel Prize for ending the same war. Well, then the historic agreement ending the First World War "Treaty of Versailles" was signed in 1919, its top guarantor was also the United States. Similarly, in Nineteen Seventy-eight, Egypt and Israel ended their long rivalry, so it also happened in the United States after the Camp David Accords. In which American President Jimmy Carter gave a guarantee. Then there was the Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

America was the guarantor there too. And now, on the fifteenth of September 2020, the Abraham Accord, the peace agreement between the Arab countries and Israel, was also signed by US President Donald Trump. They are the guarantors. So, friends, the question is, why were the American presidents signing all the major agreements in the world until two and a half years ago? Why America stood behind every important and major agreement. The answer is obvious both friends and enemies believed in their strength and trust. The American guarantee meant that if any of the terms of the peace treaty the two agreed to

If he deviates from them, the United States will give a penalty to the one who is guilty. And as a powerful country, it has the ability to implement its guarantee. It was a great trust that was due to American power and also showed the confidence of other countries in America. So, the history of the last one hundred years and even before that is that China did not have this role, but now from March 10, twenty twenty-three, this history has changed. It's a milestone in ending one of the world's fiercest rivalries, Butter Rivalries, Extreme Hospitality.

The deal was broken by China, not America. That is, now even powerful countries have started accepting China's guarantee. So the question here is, is America out of the Arab Great Game, out of the affairs of the Arab world? The issues of Central Asia and the Middle East will now go beyond the American grasp? A major blow to the American superpower? Yes, it seems, but you know that America and Saudi Arabia are not on good terms since Donald Trump, their relations have deteriorated. You have already seen her background story in this vlog, in which we told you the story of the purple carpet and the elbow salute.

So, friends, the thing is that America is a little out of the international stage and now especially the Arab Great Game, but China did not gain as much from this agreement, did not get as much benefit as it appears at first glance. We give you three tips. The first is that the United States, in any case, could not make a peace deal with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Because from 1980 until today, America has severed relations with Iran. The United States has imposed countless sanctions. So how was it possible for the US to be a guarantor of any deal that included Iran?

But as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, according to the White House, Saudi Arabia was constantly keeping the US President informed about the peace talks deal. That is probably why the US President has welcomed it first and said that this agreement is in the American and global interest. In other words, it is not a big deal that America is not in this deal because it was practically impossible that it could come officially in the case of Iran. This deal, on the contrary, has increased the responsibility of China to remove the fear of Saudi Arabia.

That Iran will not advance its nuclear program. And this is our second important point. It means that the United States has become diplomatically weak in the Arab region, but now one of the most difficult diplomacy in this region has come to the plate of the Chinese. Now China has to play a game that no one has been able to play until now, that is to keep it bound by the agreement that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It should be noted that China is also a signatory to the agreement, which restricts Iran from enriching uranium to a certain level that would make it a weapon. Donald Trump personally came out one-sided from this deal

 

But still, Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union are part of this agreement. So it is China's responsibility not to allow Iran to develop weapons that threaten Saudi Arabia and Israel. The third point is that although China has concluded this agreement, the terms of the agreement indicate that it is at most an agreement that diplomatic relations between the two countries will be restored. Embassies will reopen in each other's countries. That means they will now be able to negotiate without bringing a third country in the middle. But how will these relations be restored now?

This has not been decided yet. At least it wasn't settled on the day of the treaty, March 10. That is why in this accord, in the peace agreement, it is written that for the next two months, Iran and Saudi Arabia will develop a framework to restore diplomacy. It means it hasn't happened yet. Our fourth point, you already know that the real founders of the Iran-Saudi peace deal are Iraq and Oman. China was brought into the middle only because Iraq and Oman obviously could not provide the strong and serious guarantees that China could provide.

Because it exists only as a powerful grunter, but if we pose the question of whether China has replaced the US as a strategic partner in the Arab region, I think it is not far off. . Because even today, if Saudi Arabia wants weapons, it does not have a better option than America. Because the United States is the country that is there for Saudi security inside its country and up to its sea, if it has to go to war with Iran or any other Arab country, the United States will be there for its security.

 

China is not ready to do this work, so even today, Saudi Arabia looks to the United States for its security. What does history tell us? According to Iranian-Saudi modern history, an incident happened in nineteen eighty-seven. During the Hajj in nineteen eighty-seven, Iranian pilgrims came to Makkah and Madinah and protested to spread their message. If he did not tolerate it, the Saudi security forces tortured him a lot, and tortured him

About four hundred Iranian pilgrims were killed in this tragedy. From here the relations became very bad, but then in 1999 and again in 1997, peace was restored, agreements were made. But these agreements could not stop the two countries from playing their games in any way. Both countries continued the war through their proxies everywhere, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Embassies and proxies of both were also functioning. So, for this reason, the biggest question is being asked again and again whether after this peace agreement, there will be only a return of the diplomatic staff or will there be something more?

Should it now be understood that Iran will leave Yemen in the next two weeks? Will Iran leave Houthi Yemenis at the mercy of Saudi forces? Will Iran, which was supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Saudi Arabia want to topple him in any case, or will both of them back down from their respective positions? Will Iran not speak for the rights of the Shiite population of Bahrain and Qatif? Will the Saudis in Iraq and Lebanon tell their pro-groups and Iran its proxies that, brother, now we have peace, so you should also go to your homes, the fighting is over?

Will it happen? It is very difficult to do so. But one thing will happen. That is, now that these two countries have opened their embassies, they will sit there and discuss such matters. And there will be no fighting because the Chinese guarantee that both of them have agreed that they will not fight anymore, they will not go to war, they will solve it through dialogue and they will not interfere in each other's internal affairs. will have a forum on what to do with the Houthis in Yemen and how to resolve their differences in Syria and Iraq or not.

Because for the last seven years, the forum to sit and talk with them has ended, so now it has come, so we think this is the only big change that will come immediately. The other things are much later, it will be time tested, time will prove whether they have done it or not. Well, all those things will be time tested, but China has also got a great benefit from all this effort. With 40 percent of its oil coming from the Gulf, its ties to the two superpowers there have strengthened. It is very important for China to remain peaceful on this road

 

Because if there is a war anywhere on the oil supply route from the Gulf to China, there will be no peace, then China's own development will be broken, and it will not get enough oil from anywhere so quickly. Footy percent oil is too much for a country's needs, so this is the route that China is now quite satisfied with securing. that he will move towards increasing his regional power and include Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization "SCO

This is a very important step, friends, because whenever a country is on the way to becoming an international power, it first makes regional alliances, making allies in its region to increase its regional influence. Strengthen relations with its neighbors in its region, both commercial and diplomatic. So China started this alliance twenty-two years ago with the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia are included in this alliance, but China's major success is that it has also made bitter rivals like Pakistan and India sit at a table in this form.

 

Although India has difficult relations with both Pakistan and China. So, looking at the same Chinese ability, it is being said that now Iran and Saudi Arabia are also included in SCO, Shanghai Cooperation will do It means that the journey from becoming a regional power to becoming a global power will be faster. Remember friends that Iran is already an observer member of "SCO". So it can be expected to happen anytime now. If all this happens or starts to happen, is the beginning of the restoration of relations between Israel and the Arab countries finished?

 

The one who came close to increasing Israel's acceptance in the Arab countries and had also established relations with the UAE and Bahrain under the Abraham Accord, will they stop here and not move forward as a way of getting closer to Israel and Saudi Arabia? The main reason was the Iranian threat, you know. Because both Saudi Arabia and Israel are against the very existence of Iran and Iran has also been against both of them. Swann had such a connection that, looking at this and other commercial interests, he was bringing the Arab countries and Israel closer to the United States. Rather, tell you that this is the dream of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They should strengthen relations with Pakistan, Indonesia, and Arab Islamic countries. US efforts for this are also ongoing because such a large Muslim population is very important to Israel's economy. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia also has the same desire. He has also stepped forward for this but with two conditions. If you want us to improve our relations with Israel, first you should allow us to run a peaceful nuclear program. In order for him to buy the weapons, the US has accepted these Saudi demands for negotiations so that these terms can be discussed.

These are good conversation starters. Saudi Arabia has also opened its airspace to Israeli passenger planes as a gesture of goodwill. Now Israeli ships can pass through Saudi Arabia, this was not allowed before, so now that Saudi Arabia and Iran are getting closer, will the journey of Saudi relations with Israel stop? Will Saudi Arabia no longer need Israeli weapons and technology, which was being talked about the most? The answer is that the Saudi-Israeli peace journey will continue. He will not be derailed by it. The plan is Vision Twenty-Thirty, in which Saudi Arabia has invested its entire economy

To extract from oil and take it to tourism, entertainment, and production. For this, he needs Israel and America very much. He needs American and Israeli support in many of his projects. Anyway, Israel is close to Saudi Arabia, a maritime neighbor. Israel and Saudi Arabia become very close through the "Sea of Aqaba," a narrow strip of sea below the Jordan. The land is not found, but the sea route is very short. Here, Newm City, the future city of Saudi Arabia is being built. That area is especially close to the Sea of Aqaba and is close to Israel.

Internet cables also come from here to Saudi Arabia and Israel. So, in such a situation, both Saudi Arabia and Israel need each other in the long term even more than Iran. That is why both will come closer. The Iran-Saudi deal will not matter to him. Because any deal can eliminate any future risk.Organization.