London – Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s two big oil-producing rivals, agreed to reopen their embassies seven years after the rupture of ties following Chinese-brokered talks in Beijing on Thursday.
Iran’s state news agency Irna said: “Following the talks, Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to resume diplomatic relations and reopen embassies within two months.”
The deal has potentially far-reaching implications for the Iranian nuclear deal and the civil war in Yemen, where the two sides are engaged in a proxy war, and shows Saudi Arabia’s new determination to conduct a foreign policy independent of the western.
The Saudi news agency also confirmed the deal, which said the two countries agreed to respect state sovereignty and not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The statement also states that Riyadh and Tehran have agreed to activate a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Foreign Minister of Iran, said: “The return to normal relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia provides great capabilities to the two countries, the region and the Islamic world. The neighborhood policy, as a key axis of the government’s foreign policy, is definitely moving in the right direction and the diplomatic apparatus is described as the basis for the preparation of further regional steps.”
With this reconciliation is changing the geopolitical structure of the world with Saudi Arabia determined to leave the dollar.
I recall Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud speaking in London in recent days defending Saudi Arabia’s ties with China, saying: “China is our main trading partner. It is also the largest trading partner of most countries. And this is a reality we will have to deal with. For us, China is an important and valuable partner in many areas. We have excellent working relationships in many sectors. But we have said it and we repeat it, always, we will look to our interests. And we will look for them both in the west and in the east.”
In January, during the Davos Forum, we have to analyze the most significant speech made by the Saudi Arabian Finance Minister, Mohammed Al-Jadaa in an interview with Bloomberg TV, confirmed that: “The Saudi government is involved in the war monetary policy implemented by China against the primacy of the US dollar in world trade. An almost impalpable war, difficult to understand for the general public, therefore less reported by the media and TV than the war in Ukraine, but no less important on a geostrategic level, if not more. There are no problems discussing how to regulate our trade deals, whether it’s the US dollar, the euro or the Saudi riyal. We have a very strategic relationship with China and we enjoy the same strategic relationship with other nations, including the United States, and we want to develop that with Europe and other countries that are willing and able to work with us.”
The Saudi minister, defining the relationship with China as very strategic, made it clear that Saudi Arabia, after decades of strong relations with the United States, is preparing to abandon the dollar for oil transactions with countries that want to use a different currency.
And this is where the Brics come in.
As we have already written, a few years ago a group of countries came together under the acronym BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) which started slowly but in the last 2 years it has gained speed and has become a new political banner since, on the eve of the war in Ukraine, China and Russia declared a strategic alliance to build a multipolar world, in contrast to the unipolar one of the West, led by the United States and the dollar.
Are we a new “Asian world order” and no longer Atlantic?