September 15, 2023
Iran and much of the media are presenting the renewal of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia as a major development that brings the Islamic Republic back into the civilized world, but other developments suggest otherwise.
In recent weeks, the two countries re-opened their embassies in the other’s country and ambassadors have arrived and taken up their duties.
But that’s about it.
The Entekhab news website charged that state media in Iran were guilty of “overexcitement” about the resumption of diplomatic relations after seven years. It said the Saudis were just trying to restrain Iran to curb it from threatening the kingdom. Soon after the story appeared, Entekhab was shut down.
It is beginning to appear to many analysts that the agreement back in March in Beijing to resume relations may have been little more than a formality. It has been noted that the two countries had diplomatic relations for decades, but ties were never good. The two countries are rivals for leadership of the Islamic world and tend to constantly bump into one another.
The Yemen civil war has been a major source of recent frictions as Iran has armed the faction fighting the faction backed by the Saudis. The fighting has slowed down, but there is no sign Iran has stopped arming the rebels. On the contrary, they appear to be continuing to do so.
The collapse of the Lebanese economy is another source of trouble, with the Saudis and Iran backing different factions there and no change since relations were resumed.
Although it gets less attention, the Saudis are furious about Syria raising money by selling the drug captagon around the Persian Gulf and sees Iran as helping Syrian smuggling. There has been no change on that front.
The Saudis did not pause even a minute from talks with Israel about establishing diplomatic relations after resuming relations with Iran. And one of things Riyadh is doing in those talks is trying to get the Americans to take a bigger military role in the Persian Gulf, something that riles Tehran.
Then on September 8, the US and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding kicking off development of a transit corridor across the Arabian peninsula, something Washington sees as part of an effort to crush Iran’s plan for a transit corridor across Iran. That’s a brand-new threat to Iran that didn’t even exist when Iran and Saudi Arabia resumed relations last March.
Trade has improved, however. The two countries had trade of just $40,000 last year. In the first two months after resuming relations, that surged to $150 million. Still, that’s a pittance when compared with Iran-UAE trade last year of $4.7 billion.
The Islamic Republic is having a problem convincing the Iranian public that Iran won anything by resuming ties with the Saudis.
On September 8, Nour News, the outlet of the Supreme National Security Council, made a huge point of touting an agreement under which the club soccer teams of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic will resume games in each other’s stadiums. Nour News said this “shows that the new agreement [on relations] between the two regional powers was not ‘ceremonial’ and ‘decorative’ contrary to claims.” The Islamic Republic is getting rather desperate if the only benefit is can cite from the resumption of ties six months ago is a few soccer games.
