Saudi Arabia & Iran Strike A Deal | Trita Parsi | TMR

Emma is joined by Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute, to discuss his recent piece in Foreign Affairs entitled “How China Became a Peacemaker in the Middle East”, co-authored with Khalid Eljabri. Trita Parsi then jumps into the revelatory role of China in brokering a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, completely changing their previous stance on foreign policy, and showing that they must be taken seriously on the international stage when it comes to diplomacy. Next, they tackle the particular failure of the US’ multi-decade disaster in the Middle East, setting ourselves up as an inflammatory and biased outside actor that bends over backward for our allies, before they wrap up the interview with an assessment of the US elite’s China hawkery and the role it continues to play in the US refusal to promote Middle Eastern autonomy.

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Trita Parsi Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for responsible statecraft. a favorite of ours here at the majority report. Here to discuss his latest piece on the Saudi Arabian and Iranian normalization agreement. Trita thanks so much for coming back on the show. thank you for having me of course so this is Major Iran Saudi Arabia they've come to a normalization agreement. The parameters are arguably less significant than how the agreement was actually reached and who helped them reach it. it was brokered by China and there was no United States involvement. Take us through the signage of this agreement last week. yeah so I think first of all you're quite right. as it stands right now this deal in and of itself is smaller than the fact that stepped in and mediated it. Iran and Saudi Arabia have had good and bad relations up and down for many many different years. And now we've had a seven-year slump and that seems to have now come to an end. But there's not going to be a Love Fest at least the normalization deal in itself doesn't guarantee that. Instead, they're continuing they're going to continue to be Rivals. But because of the normalization that rivalry is now going to be much better managed. And that hopefully will then mean that they're not going to be recklessly spreading their rivalry throughout the region and turning other countries into an arena for their conflict. So that is fantastic news for most countries in the region. of course assuming that things will go through as planned. It can lead to something bigger. it can lead to a much bigger strategic shift. But that is a much greater unknown at this point. But the fact that China stepped in and mediated this is extremely significant. Now the Chinese were not alone the Iraqis and the Omanis had been mediating and preparing the ground for this since 2019. but they couldn't really push it over the Goal Line the Chinese came in and did that.