Stephen Walt: Iran-Saudi reconciliation is a wake-up call for America

According to the report of Fars News Agency International Group, Stephen Walt, a prominent scholar and theoretician of international relations at Harvard University, in a note in the “Foreign Policy” magazine, referred to the reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia as a “wake-up call for America.”

Walt writes at the beginning of this note: “Reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran – with the facilitating role of China – cannot be compared to Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem (Beit al-Maqdis) in 1977, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in He considered the year 1939 as a historical year.

Despite this, he continued to write: “Even in this case, this agreement is a great agreement if it remains stable.” “Most importantly, this agreement is a wake-up call for the Joe Biden administration and other parts of US foreign policy because it exposes the imposed flaws that have long crippled US foreign policy in the Middle East.”

According to Stephen Walt, the agreement also shows how China is trying to establish itself as a force for peace in the world, a responsibility that the United States has largely abandoned in recent years.

In response to the question of how China succeeded in playing this role, this theorist of international relations wrote: “China was able to step forward and allow the two sides to reach an agreement because the significant economic growth of Beijing has given this country an ever-increasing role in the Middle East. has granted.”

Stephen Walt mentioned China’s friendly relations with most countries in the West Asian region as another reason that helped this country mediate between Tehran and Riyadh. “China has diplomatic relations and trade with all sides: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Gulf states, and even Bashar al-Assad in Syria,” he writes.

The author then notes: “On the contrary, the United States only has ‘special relations’ with some countries in the Middle East and does not have relations with other countries, especially Iran.” The result is that dependent governments [به آمریکا] Like Egypt, Israel or Saudi Arabia ignore American support and ignore Washington’s concerns with blatant disrespect, whether those concerns are related to human rights in Egypt, the Saudi war in Yemen, or Israel’s long-standing and ruthless campaign to colonize the West Bank.

He adds: “At the same time, our generally futile efforts to isolate and overthrow the Islamic Republic have left Washington with no ability to shape perceptions of Iran’s actions or diplomatic path.”

According to this analysis, Washington, by creating the impression that it cannot take many measures to establish peace or justice in the region, has completely opened the space for China’s maneuver.

The author further mentioned the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia as one of the important dimensions of the competition between China and the United States, and based on this, he asked: “Will others see Washington as the best model for the future world order or Beijing?”

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