The Grand Rebalance

Saudi Arabia and Iran have normalized relations in a move set to modify the regional balance of forces.  A Saudi-Iranian peace will not be durable. Indeed, there is no sign that the negotiations have resolved fundamental differences between Riyadh and Tehran, differences that run back decades.  Western observers should not be fooled: the deal does nothing to stabilize the Middle East.  Instead, it indicates the complete death of the Middle East status quo, and the need for forceful engagement, and a coherent strategy, on the part of the United States.

In the Middle East, however, there is no longer a status quo.  This is because the U.S. never made it a matter of policy to preserve a specific regional system when it was the largest external power in the Middle East.  The U.S., more accurately, never constructed or sponsored a regional system.  The UK’s withdrawal from the Middle East between 1968 and 1971 eliminated a systemically continuous actor.  The British approach, meanwhile, was exceptionally active – a reasonably small military footprint was placed alongside a competent, well-informed foreign service and intelligence apparatus to sustain regional stability.

The U.S. never created a similar system. Instead, it sought to partner with specific regional powers to maintain the apparent status quo, which meant not a sustainable long-term structure, but instead the absence of large-scale warfare.  Iran was the U.S.’ first partner, a mistake insofar as the Shah was both too weak to maintain power but Iran too headstrong to serve as a viable regional policeman. 

Once Iran’s current theocrats came to power in 1979, the U.S. turned to Saudi Arabia, and to a degree Israel, to preserve a semblance of order.  Yet there was never an identifiable period of regional stability.  Iran and Iraq hammered each other for eight long years. 

Immediately afterward, an impoverished Iraq with the world’s fourth-largest army invaded Kuwait and was humbled by an American-led coalition.  This triggered a decade of simmering Iraqi internal conflict and generated two regional threats, an Iran with unmistakable expansionist ambitions and an Iraq ruled by an ideologically poisonous, borderline psychotic dictator who funded Palestinian suicide bombers.  The U.S. then intervened in 2003, but again absent a coherent regional structure for the future.

The Obama administration’s policy of Realignment stemmed from the same mix of maundering strategic planning.  Like his predecessors since the 1979 Revolution, Barack Obama never seemed to identify the Middle East’s strategic importance.  Unlike his predecessors, he was willing to break with the American policy of de facto strategic neglect – a policy that sought “change through sanctions application” and by extension the avoidance of war.  Instead, Obama believe that a regional order could be created, one that included Iran, China, and Russia.  All were meant to be responsible partners in a new Middle East, a Middle East no longer characterized by sectarian violence, but instead one in which the Gulf States, Iran, and by implication Israel “shared” the region.

The vehicle for this new Middle East was to be the JCPOA.  The Deal would provide Tehran with cash in return for good behavior.  Meanwhile, another eight years of Democratic leadership would ease the region’s transition to stability – Saudi Arabia, the odious petrostate, would be humbled, and ethnic-religious oddity Israel would be brought into line as well.

This scheme upended the closest approximation of a status quo that had existed regionally, the U.S.’ stubborn unwillingness to allow other great powers to act in the Middle East.  The result was regional cataclysm, first in Syria, then again in Iraq, then in Yemen and Libya, and once again in Lebanon.  In each case, Iran has leveraged the strategic chaos that external power intervention and state collapse has created to expand its influence and create a new balance of power.  Iranian proxies now dominate Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.  Iranian-aligned Russia props up the Assad regime, with Iran’s help, in Syria.  And Iranian military and nuclear technology advances apace, giving Tehran the ability to strike targets throughout the Arabian Peninsula with conventional munitions absent any identifiable Saudi or Emirati response.

The new Chinese-brokered agreement includes very little of identifiable substance, understandable given that Iran and Saudi Arabia retain fundamental ideological and strategic disagreements.  But Saudi Arabia’s normalization with Iran is a clear signal to the U.S. regardless.  The Saudis have seen the Biden administration’s treatment of Israel and recall Mr. Biden’s pledge to make Saudi Arabia under MBS a pariah state.  The only substantive concession Saudi Arabia has received is a photo opportunity between MBS and Biden last year. 

The U.S. has been entirely unsympathetic to Saudi concerns over Iranian nuclearization.  Moreover, given the IAEA inspector’s report of supposed Iranian concessions absent evidence, the U.S. is likely to resume its holding pattern over the JCPOA, still hoping for a resumption of the deal.  Saudi Arabia, fed up with American strategic irrationality, has indicated its willingness to engage with other major powers.  It is no coincidence it did so just as it was leaked that the price for Saudi-Israeli normalization is American support for the Saudi nuclear program.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s actions at this point are no endorsement of a specific regional or global order, but rather a brief hedge: since the U.S. will not support aggressive Israeli action against Iran or shepherd a Saudi-Emirati-Israeli coalition into existence, Riyadh has deferred an ultimate decision while building economic links with Beijing.  This Saudi choice indicates the Middle East no longer has a specific status quo, a system to defend.  It instead has a balance of forces, one which increasingly favors Iran.

The only way to stave off a systemic Middle East crisis is through a hard course correction.  This involves not necessarily American regional military commitments, but instead a commitment to back a tangible coalition.  The rub here is Saudi nuclear requests point toward a nuclear weapons program.  These are ominous signs for long-term American interests.

Most critically, however, China has demonstrated its diplomatic bona fides.  It has done what the majority of mainstream China analysts said Beijing would never do, negotiated an agreement as a third-party broker beyond the Indo-Pacific.  This agreement is unlikely to last. But Beijing’s diplomatic foray into the Middle East indicates its truly Eurasian ambitions.

Seth Cropsey is founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.