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Nearly every News alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-846, or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to ask us anything lawfairmail.com by December 16th hey guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. And if you're anything like me, holiday shopping has officially started. And you know where I'm going. Ulta Beauty they have the cutest gift sets right now, like the Sol de Janeiro, Shea Rosa and cheer perfume Mist Trio 8. It smells so good. I've been misting it everywhere on me, on the street, on my pillow. It's a whole vibe. I'm obsessed with the Tarte Kindness Cafe Collector set. It's packed with everyday makeup must haves and it's honestly too cute to wrap. And if you need a cozy little self care moment, the Moroccan Oil Hand Care Essentials Kit is luxe, hydrating and smells delicious. Don't worry if you can't decide right now. An Ulta Beauty gift card is the perfect gift for everyone. So whether you're gifting your bestie or yourself, make the season yours and head to Ulta Beauty today. Ulta Beauty gifting happens here.
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Transform the everyday with Siemens. I'm Isabella Arroyo, intern at Lawfair, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for November 23, 2025. On Tuesday, November 18, President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House. During the visit, President Trump announced that the US Would recognize Saudi Arabia as a major non NATO ally. Following the visit, the White House said that Bin Salman would increase investment commitments in the United states to nearly $1 trillion, that the US and Saudi Arabia had signed a framework on collaboratively diversifying critical mineral supply chains, and that President Trump had approved a defense sale package to Saudi Arabia. During the leaders meeting, President Trump also chastised a reporter for asking about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and asserted, counter to U.S. intelligence assessments, that Bin Salman did not order Khashoggi's assassination and dismemberment in 2018. For today's archive, I selected an episode from April 13, 2023 in which Heyman Hahn and Scott R. Anderson sat down with Jonathan Lord to discuss the contours of the then recent deal to restore diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, China's role in brokering that deal, the future of the United States in the Persian Gulf, and more. I'm Hae Min Hahn, associate editor at Lawfair. This is The Lawfare Podcast, April 13, 2023. A few weeks ago, China made headlines for brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to thaw diplomatic relations after seven years of cutting ties and even more years of tense relations since then, we've already begun to see some downstream effects of this deal, with significant movement on the war in Yemen and the reopening of Iran's embassy in Saudi Arabia. This is a story with two major strands. One about the potential effects of a successful normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and another about how China, and not the US Seems to have made it happen. To understand what all of this might mean for the region, I talked to Lawfair Senior Editor Scott Anderson and CNAS's Middle East Security Program Director Jonathan Lord about the contours of the deal, China's involvement in the process, and what to look out for as this deal ripens. It's The Lawfare Podcast, April 13, the Saudi Iran deal featuring China. Well, I'd like to start by getting everyone on the same page as to exactly what happened between Iran and Saudi Arabia over these past few weeks. Obviously, in March, what made headlines was the agreement that they signed, this joint agreement. What does this really mean, Scott? Is it as far as rapprochement, or is it just normalization? Can you place this in the context of what's happening between the two countries?
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Sure. What we saw this past couple weeks is really the restoration of a status quo that existed up to about 2016, up until 2016. In 2016, we saw a kind of protest that turned violent outside of the Saudi Embassy in Iran that was a reaction to Saudi execution of certain figures associated with Shia movements in Saudi Arabia, among other complaints in the bilateral relationship that led them to sever diplomatic relations, essentially cease operating embassies in each other's countries. There are different shades of severing diplomatic relations. You can not send ambassadors. You can close your embassies. You can do what they appear to do here, which is had to close an embassy for security reasons and then not reopen it. I believe the Iranian. I don't know. I think there was an Iranian ambassador in Saudi Arabia. I'm trying to think prior to this, but I haven't had One for a while. I cannot remember if there was in 2016 or not. But the key point being they've now agreed that they're going to exchange ambassadors again, which is often considered sort of normalizing diplomatic relations. Diplomatic relations is kind of like the third tier of relationships that we think of in the international law context. You have the recognition of one country of another that say, well, we recognize you as a country, okay? But if you recognize a country, that doesn't mean you recognize the government. Then you recognize the government saying, oh, we recognize you as the government of this country, so you can speak for this country, okay? They never really disputed that that was a big issue, actually a problem for Iran until throughout the part of the 1980s into the early 1990s in some areas. But between the two of them wasn't an issue for the last couple decades. Instead, it's that third tier to say, we recognize you as a government and we're going to exchange ambassadors, exchange embassies, and embrace each other's ability to do the conventional methods of diplomatic engagement. That restoration is really what's happening here. It's a notable step. I don't want to downplay it entirely. It is important to have those sorts of dynamics and those sorts of engagements. That's the way statecraft is executed. When you have ambassadors and diplomats in place actually able to engage with each other, that is what forms bilateral relationships. It can be a hugely important avenue of communication. But at the same time, it doesn't necessarily have substantive content. It doesn't always necessarily imply anything more than we're going to talk to each other. Very hostile countries have fully normal diplomatic relations. Here it is paired a little bit with, we're going to have flights between each other's countries, a couple of other ties that suggest a little bit more normalized, maybe broader political, economic relationship. But I think, although, Jonathan, feel free to step in and correct me relatively small fry so far, the restoration of diplomatic relations, significant, notable. But again, its substantive content is still not necessarily that loaded. What this all means in terms of changes in policy, we still have to wait to see.
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Right. So in context of going back to status quo, as it were, is what seems like you're saying, Jonathan, maybe could you give us a bit of an overview as quickly as possible to do of Saudi Arabia and Iran and why it might be interesting or notable that they are actually coming back to some sort of diplomatic relationship and why it would be of interest for them to do so?
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Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm very excited to be here. There has been ongoing competition between Iran and Saudi for an incredibly long time, well before even the revolution in 1979, I think the geopolitical tectonic plates under the region have often put these two nations into opposing positions of competing. This has reached more of a head in more recent years. Once President Trump decided to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, Iran began the process of working to slowly tick up both its nuclear activities and slowly walk away from the deal, while at the same time engaging in other regional activities. That brought us into a cycle of escalation that then involved many of our partners in the region as well. We saw this a lot in 2019, where Iranian proxies were engaging throughout the region, but we saw activity in Yemen from the Houthis, who aren't really a proxy of Iran, but certainly a partner, launching attacks against Saudi Arabia, against UAE. We saw, of course, in 2019, the attack at the port of Fujira against UAE. And then, of course, there was the attack against the Saudi Aramco facilities at Abqaiq and Quraysh, which took a massive amount of the world's oil production supply offline for a short while. These are the types of things that Iran would do to the partners. In addition to its maritime activities, of seizing ships in commercially sensitive and important waterways, its development of ballistic missiles, I think it might have been. Jim Mattis, when he was Secretary of Defense, used to talk about the five pillars of the Iranian threat and they cyber activities, their maritime activities, their support to proxies and terrorists, their ballistic missile development, and of course, the nuclear program. And so in this period, we saw the Iranians firing on all cylinders and really activating all aspects of that. And of course, the United States attacked Qasem Soleimani, and things got really actually quite violent there for a minute between the US and the Iranians and the Saudis and other Gulf partners found themselves caught in the middle of this and otherwise didn't want to be there anymore. It had reached somewhat of a head. And so about two years ago, we started to see the beginnings of this rapprochement. Baghdad hosted talks for Tehran and Riyadh, and so they continued in Oman. And so it wasn't all that much of a surprise to see something announced. Perhaps the inclusion of China here at the end was a bit of something else and a bit of messaging, but the Chinese played a role here that other Western powers probably couldn't have because of the situation with Iran. Whereas China is a major trading partner of Iran and perhaps the number one consumer of Saudi oil. They had a natural role to play in inserting themselves to restore some degree of geopolitical calm in the region. And of course, as Scott says, it remains to be seen just how much calm this deal buys. The Saudis, again, once the embassies are reopened, will have restored relations to a level that is equal to, I think, three US non NATO major allies on the peninsula. So there's been a lot of clutching of pearls and gnashing of teeth and clutching wringing of hands. But ultimately this really does in fact just restore communication between the Saudis and Iran that's basically equal to what is normal between most countries in the world.
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Right. You touched on this China element, which I want to get to now, this kind of long progression where you said that China maybe towards the end got really involved. This has been reported on as a diplomatic win for China, of course, and a lot of commentators think it's an inflection point between perhaps us having more involvement in the region and China may be replacing that. To what extent do you think that's true, especially in context of this picture you've painted for us just now of maybe it being more of a last minute thing and again, mostly technical at this point, what they're doing in terms of restoration?
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Yeah, I think this was somewhat of a political target of opportunity for everyone involved, I think. I'm not closely tracking all of their movements, but Ali Shankani, who is the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, really showed up in Beijing a week before the deal was announced. Again, there was at least 24 months of preparation that took place across multiple countries to get there. So I got the sense that Beijing hosting this was almost a last minute good idea that would otherwise provide everyone a little bit of something. That doesn't really mean much qualitatively in terms of the deal, but in terms of the messaging. China did do a bit of a public relations tour demonstrating how they are a world superpower who can bring peace and diplomacy and can convene enemy states and how they're a force for stability and good in the world. Iran obviously relies heavily on China, and I think to a degree there was an opportunity here for Saudi Arabia to demonstrate that while of course it continues to rely largely on US Military posture and presence and security assistance, it can look elsewhere for support in the world. And I think all good policies tell a story. There has to be a degree of narrative, and I think this may not be the main story, but I think It's a helpful, compelling narrative for the actors here to play on for each of their benefits.
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For various reasons, I 100% agree with that. And I think maybe it's worth one angle I would pull out of this. I think it's a useful way to think about it is that in people who have framed this as a big win for China, there's kind of two subsets of that. One I think is actually right and one I think is wrong. The one camp says this is a big win for China because China made this happen. China facilities. It's a sign of China's power to achieve political outcomes in the region. That I think is a much harder sell for the reasons really. Jonathan, I think really aptly laid out, which is that this is an outcome that has been in process for many years with backing from a lot of different regional actors and including from the United States, kind of process chaired by Prime Minister Khatami of Iraq, no longer in office, but at the time was really a US backed process kind of at a distance, kind of quietly, but not super subtly. I think that's been true of a lot of these sorts of steps. This idea of a rapprochement was something that Jake Sullivan and Daniel Benaim, who's now a DAs at the state Department, they wrote about from Foreign affairs before the election in 2000. I think, I can't remember exactly when. 2019. It's an idea that's been out there for a while. It's something people have been working towards. It's a step that's not clear what China did, if anything, to change the calculus. The one thing China might have done is to provide more effective guarantor of some sort of consequence if Iran were to renege because the United States is a little maxed out to some extent in terms of sanctions. There are steps it could do, but it already hits Iran very hard. I suspect that China has a little bit, maybe more leverage they could do in small ways to correct small infractions on Iran. But also they didn't really agree to that much. So it's not clear what that would be. If Iran failed to secure the new Saudi embassy, you saw another riot match under their territory, that would be a big issue in China. Maybe it would feel compelled to get involved because they put their name on this deal, but it's not a real claim of Chinese power. I think it's right that it's a win for China because China, I think kind of made out like a bandit in this one because this is an outcome that a lot of progress has been made towards the way I see it. I'd be curious, Jonathan, if you agree with this. I really see this more than anything as Saudi Arabia seeing a moment saying, all right, we're willing to do this, we're going to take this step, but we don't want to give the Biden administration the win. We want to give somebody else the win there. I think China played a very convenient role, in my mind. I think that's actually a common theme. We're seeing a lot of Saudi moves in the last six months, particularly where they're much more resistance to look like they are going along with us. They want to demonstrate independence, even if they're moving in a policy direction that in a lot of ways the United States has been pushing for in different degrees.
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Yeah, I think that's certainly right. It's also unclear to me, based off of where the US Is in its own diplomacy in relations to Iran, what the US Role really could have been. I mean, certainly we're a player in that. We can increase sanctions, we can remove sanctions, we can threaten, but in terms of having really trust measures where we can convene those two partners, that doesn't really work. So I think to a large extent, China made sense from that perspective. I think it's interesting because I'm going to be careful how I say this, because I think the Abraham Accords are really quite a big deal. But I do see somewhat of a corollary here where a lot of the rapprochement and the movement of interests behind the Abraham Accords had been taking place for years and very quietly, a lot of those signatories had been talking and preparing for some sort of normalization for a long time. And so the US Entry into that was relatively late. But of course, there was a lot of juice that the US could put into the deal by holding a signing ceremony on the White House lawn about potentially sweetening the deal for certain partners by getting closer, and we would otherwise become more available to them as partners in security assistance. And so there were natural ways in which we probably accelerated its closure, but we were similarly late to it and in some degrees important for providing an imprimatur on the deal as opposed to changing anything on the ground that wasn't already happening. And I think that's really true here when we talk about China in the context of whether or not it negotiated anything between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
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Yeah, that's all very fair. Want to take this from maybe China's perspective, though. Maybe if we think about it from them kind of watching and maybe thinking about when to insert at the right moment. And also because of their long term desire maybe to want to present themselves as a different force, power, even in the region. I thought it was really interesting that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said this about the agreement. The colonial hegemonic tactics of stirring up contradictions, creating estrangement and division should be rejected by the people all over the world. So obviously this is something that China says a lot and is trying to message. But given this at the end, swooping in, does this not actually suggest something important about China's ability to bring this to the finish line? You said a number of times that, Jonathan, you said that the US wouldn't have maybe been able to do this. So is there some truth to what she's saying here?
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I think time will tell. I think China, seemingly pretty new to this role on a global stage, the US has been doing this kind of thing for the greater part of the 20th century. They may be buying risks that they're not necessarily aware of. To Scott's point, what actually has been agreed to and what has been implemented. Right now they're in the process. Technical teams have been exchanged to reopen the embassies. But there was a lot of chatter about there being much larger, more ephemeral agreements about non interference in each other's countries. And it was talked about publicly. Again, we don't know whether this is something that can really be implemented or how sustainable it is. But the closure of Iran International, which is a major news outlet that is purported to be backed by the Saudis, that's very virulently against the Iranian regime. And then of course, discussion about Iran ceasing the smuggling of weapons and material, lethal aid in support to the Houthis in Yemen, these are all nice things, but ultimately it encumbers a lot of work. And this could all go sideways potentially. And then is China on the hook for having negotiated a failed deal or otherwise been unable to be the guarantor that it claims it can be? So we'll have to see in fact, what exactly they've signed on to. But this really is only the beginning. And I keep referring to other agreements, but the brilliance and perhaps the flaw of the Oslo Accords was that so many of the intractable, intractable, really difficult problems were all sort of punted to be determined later. And I get the sense that in this deal there's a lot of kumbaya, but not necessarily a lot of agreement and process on Solving some of those more difficult elements that are really at play that need to get solved for otherwise to be effective rapprochement between these countries.
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I 100% agree with that. And more fundamentally, well, a. I think it's a really interesting Chinese state because China could have said that exact same thing in the 70s and the 80s when it was first really trying to engage the region. And in fact it did. You look at very similar statements. The narrative of the shared post colonial experience, that emphasis on that point is core to China's role in the Non Aligned Movement, which is something that's real, still fundamental to their foreign policy and their global espoused worldview. Very hard to reconcile with what's happening in Ukraine and their backing of Russia. So set that to the side for the moment. But their stated Russia rhetoric, their stated positions, it's a very consistent theme, one of the most consistent foreign policies probably of just about any country in the world. Really hard to reconcile that with what's actually happening here. One of the biggest drivers for a stronger line being drawn for the last 15 years in the region on Iran has been Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the one who led the efforts to intervene in Yemen in 2015. Saudi Arabia has been a big driver of this on a lot of different fronts. The idea that this has been a colonial imposition and that in fact this is a Kumbaya moment that is arising because of the removal of that colonial position is a very convenient rhetorical point for China. It's one that might make it easier to swallow for perhaps some Saudi audiences, some Iranian audiences, a lot of people around the world who have often rightly founded reservations about Western imperialism or what people call Western imperialism. But it doesn't really correlate what was happening here. This is a conflict driven in large part by a Saudi reaction to some very legitimate security threats because Iran's also very bad behavior. So the idea that this is a Western imposed division the United States has very strong views on, particularly Iran. But Saudi Arabia, I think, has always been a driver towards even more extreme position, at least the last decade or two. I think it's hard to reconcile that sort of statement with that reality.
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I would like to associate myself with Scott's comments. I would also add to them a little bit in the sense that you kind of have to look at the whole chessboard right now. And if we take a look at this from the Saudi perspective and recently, I think, released a report looking at Iran's nuclear program in ways that the US and the west and others could potentially disincentivize it, and had a discussion with some of the participants in the exercises associated with that project. But if you keep in mind that Iran's capacity as a national power right now is heavily, heavily reduced by the fact that it is under a crippling sanctions regime from a power dynamic, this might actually be a very opportune time for the Saudis to engage with them from a position of strength. By comparison, it's been interesting for me to look at how the us, Europe, Israel, potentially Gulf states all look at this problem and then prioritize an element of it a little bit differently. It was a colleague of mine who, in the context of one of our discussions, said, for Saudi Arabia, the nuclear threat is not really the number one priority. It's all of the regional power that Iran can bring to bear. And so from their perspective, keeping Iran under sanctions whereas they're otherwise throttled, and their national capacity to create arms and sow havoc in the region remains constrained as their number one priority. But, of course, if you talk to others in Washington or even Israel, finding some way to stop their nuclear process is the number one thing. And of course, we've been leaning. Our modality for that has been the jcpoa. It's been rapprochement, it's been diplomacy. Others, I think, have been a little bit more ambivalent about that, obviously. But the region doesn't see the nuclear program as the number one threat. They see the Iranian threat more holistically. So if they could find a way to continue to push this process forward whereby Iran continues to be throttled by sanctions, I think they're more comfortable in that world than a world in which we might reach some sort of accord with Iran on the future of its nuclear program, but then otherwise unleash it by removing all these sanctions. And that's a worse world for the Saudis and others in the region.
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Yeah. On this, wanted to touch on, I guess, what the reaction you think has been from the rest of the Middle east on this and what, what interest they might have in facilitating or maybe hoping for the opposite of normalization to happen, and what are metrics of success when it comes to different perspective and key players in the Middle east on this particular normalization.
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Yeah, it's a great question. I was in Tel Aviv and again, I don't know what time it was here in the west, but it was a Thursday evening when it was reported in the Wall Street Journal that Saudi Arabia was seeking massive security guarantees from the west and possibly its own nuclear program. In exchange for normalization with Israel. And that was a big, big deal until the following morning when it was announced that Saudi Arabia, Iran and China were doing this joint trilateral deal themselves. And you would get this sense of whiplash, where's Saudi Arabia? What are they doing? But the truth is, and this is actually a behavior we noticed in our exercise looking at the region and the nuclear program, is that these things actually are not necessarily in opposition to each other and are really reflective of long standing policy in Saudi Arabia, where there's a degree of two tracking going on, where engaging both politically and economically with Iran is a good idea because it reduces tensions, it reduces the risk of provocations, while at the same time they're going to work very hard to build their own domestic military capacity and capability to neutralize the very same threats that Iran and its proxies and others pose. And so they may not couch it as that. They may talk about ensuring the safety and sovereignty of Saudi citizens just like the Emiratis do. No one wants to point a finger at the threat that Iran poses. No one ever wants to to provoke a crazy neighbor. But at the same time they'll go over to that neighbor's house with a gift basket and put on appearances and do all that they must do to keep things on an even keel while arming themselves in case the crazy neighbor has an event one Saturday night and gets crazy. Both things can be true at once. I think we're actually seeing that play out in real life here where there's no question in my mind that the Saudis see these things in opposition. They will pursue a better, more stable accord with Iran while working with the US other partners, and potentially one day Israel to strengthen their own military capabilities.
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Then what does the ideal US role in that process look like moving forward? Is this a crowded table? Should the US just let China maybe continue from both, maybe US perspective? Maybe what's the right answer to that? But also just from a general, more world peace perspective, is there an answer to that that's different from maybe what the US might want to be doing?
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Well, let me address the US piece of it first. Let me take a moment and put on my US policymaker hat and say I would approach this from the perspective of ruthlessly pursuing US national security objectives. Let's do that first because that's fun. I would take a look at the national defense strategy and, and if you flip to around page 42, it finally gets to the Middle East. And while the global strategy is focused on building capacity and capability to deter Chinese expansionism in the Indo Pacific and obviously to neutralize the acute threat of Russia in Europe. There is some words about buying down the risk of instability in the Middle east by working closely with partners to build up their capabilities and create shared capabilities in between them. I think that could otherwise backfill US Military posturing capability. That's simply going to be needed either elsewhere in the world, or those dollars and people are going to be needed elsewhere to build the future capabilities for global threats. So the talk of integrated air and missile defense systems, maritime domain awareness between multiple partners, the challenge of that is that while again, in ruthless pursuit of national security interests, that means the US should be doing everything it can to sell weapons and advanced technology and rebuild relationships so that Central Command can be the convener of all these partners against shared threats, named or unnamed. Politics in Washington gets in the way. And obviously there is another debate about how much we should be doing with these autocratic regimes that regularly engage in human rights abuses, that chop up journalists, that do things that are otherwise not necessarily in the US national interest. We have a robust strategy and then half of a plan for implementation. But I feel like that's almost always the case, and that's where we are today, where at the same time, we can know from this ruthless national security objective that it makes sense for MBS to be close to us, but at the same time, then see Congress gnash its teeth, as it has done perennially for at least five or six years, about continuing to sell these partners weapons. And so the partners get that, and they're not unaware. And so they're hedging and they're seeking other sources. And for our purposes, it's almost the worst of two worlds, because they have priced in our departure from the region, this narrative, and so they're looking elsewhere. But in fact, we do continue to have robust military posture and presence in the region at great cost. So we're not gaining the influence of that presence. We've sort of forgotten, and yet we're also there expending the cost, both in service members who are deployed there, and then, of course, continuing the posture and presence. That's the opportunity cost for what we want to be doing to get after China and Russia. So that's a real challenge. So I would argue that it would probably be best, as is often the case, for our political leaders to get on the same page as our policymakers, such that we could all be moving out in one direction that's otherwise clear and more coherent to ourselves. But certainly the partners and also our adversaries. Hey folks, Ben Whittes here. I want you to imagine a gift that brings your favorite holiday traditions and memories to life every time you see it, every day.
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- [37:07]
C
What I would also just add to that is I think there is a narrative here where kind of different sides, in some ways two very different camps have really embraced a zero sum way of framing these developments. I think is a problem. On the one hand, you have the kind of highly restraint oriented crowd that is eager to highlight a case that they think demonstrates problems with the US Imperial presence as they may frame it in the region and say these are states reacting against that China is gaining on us precisely because the United States is overreached. And then you have people on a much more interventionist, strong military, more conventional, by some accounts pro strong military presence in the region saying we are losing out to China. This is zero sum precisely because we're beginning to back away from the Middle east. And that's a problem. Both of them are essentially framing it as losing to China. I don't think it is necessarily a zero sum game. I think that's a problematic way to think of it. It's a very natural way. People tend to write op eds, but it is a really problematic way to think of it. It's a good thing if we have another major power willing to invest resources in maintaining stability in the Middle east. If our priority is stability in the Middle east so we can focus on problems elsewhere, including with that other major power. Perhaps it becomes a problem if you end up seeing superpower competition and that starts breeding conflict, which we saw in certain corners of the world during the Cold War. Other parts of the world were very stable during the Cold War, and it kind of requires this management and consistent focusing. How do we think about where our shared interests are? I actually think in the Middle East, China and the United States have a lot of shared interests, not all of them. There's going to be spots of competition and conflict. But pretending like it's all a zero sum game is a really problematic way to think of it. For the United States, I think that means that their interests probably lie towards the international community. If you think the international community likes stability in the Middle east, which is accepting China's help and saying it's a good thing China's working on this, which is more or less the line I think we've gotten out of the Biden administration. There's going to be other times where they say, well, look, China, you shouldn't be working with Saudi Arabia on violating human rights issues or helping them cover up for repression of the media or other things like that that might also come out of this relationship. But at this stage, this seems like a step that's in line with U.S. policy interests, regional security interests, and accepting that China might have a valid and useful role to play in that, I don't think is contrary to interests and too much of the commentary, it pretends otherwise.
- [39:35]
A
Right?
- [39:36]
B
I think that's true in one regard. I think in another regard, our foreign policy presence in the Middle east has been largely through the military toolkit. It is through our military presence which is designed to assure these partners and then of the sale of our military kit and hardware. And that's really been our currency and our tool of influence. And China has really engaged on a different level. Sure, they sell things in the military space, but it has been infrastructure investment, it has been capital investment, the introduction of telecom and these other massive projects into the region that the US really doesn't have a direct answer for, because we don't have a means of directing American companies to just go forth and invest like the Chinese can. They can direct economic expansion outward. And so we're sort of operating at these two levels. But where it becomes perhaps a little tricky for US interests is that many of these systems that are ending up all over the region do threaten US Tech. There are backdoors that are otherwise designed to collect and steal data such that I'm not worried about There being direct competition necessarily for the US And China. What I'm largely concerned about is, yes, we do all this great stuff. We work, we're military partners, and then someone flips a switch, the Huawei network comes on and all of a sudden these are entire areas that are denied to us because they're from an intelligence standpoint, from a security standpoint, otherwise unsafe for us to be operating in with our high level equipment and technology. I do think we need to have some sort of answer for the partners about how we can, if not compete, but find ways to de conflict such that, yeah, if they want to go out and make deals with Beijing, they can, but there's got to be a way by which it doesn't undermine or threaten our ability to work with them on the areas where they want to work with us.
- [41:39]
A
Right. And I want to color this kind of deconflict versus work together US China relationship with maybe two examples for listeners, maybe one being the Yemen, the war in Yemen where you see the US and China maybe being able to work together, maybe not honestly. And then the other being just general oil interests from both places and opec. So maybe, I don't know if either of you want to start with maybe Yemen.
- [42:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, binding off Yemen is going to be really hard. There are concentric circles of the Yemen problem, right? So you have regional powers that have both proxies and patrons in the country, and they have serviced and provided lethal aid to those patrons. UAE has done this, Saudi Arabia has done this. Sometimes at cross purposes, often at cross purposes. And then of course, then you have the Houthis as well. Oftentimes the Houthis have attacked some of those outside patrons because of their support to internal forces. And the context of the attack on Abu Dhabi last January is that the Giants Brigade, which is a Yemeni force, but it's from the south and largely supported by uae, was now engaged in the fight in Marab along with the Republic of Yemen government forces against the Houthis. So that was a message, get yourselves out of Yemen, stop supporting these people. So say you can get to a place where the prisoner's dilemma of, okay, all of us are going to stop materially supporting some group in Yemen that supports our interests. If you get there, you then still have the problem of Yemen, which is incredibly divided under the worst conditions, where there is really very little understanding or agreement on how to move forward in a way that then brings all of these constituent pieces together, where they can share resources, maintain their patronage networks and create a functioning, stable country, especially where in the south you do have a movement of people who have attempted secede multiple times and in some cases, in some history have succeeded. And then of course, now you have a very expansionist mentality among the Houthis who've seen their success and who want to rule the country. And you have a highly attritted, weakened central government in the midst of all that, to say nothing of the fact. What happened when you leave ungoverned space there in the south? And we have seen Al Qaeda do things from one level, which is simply just to be there, to the other level, where they have attempted to project terror to the outside world, using that ungoverned space as a launchpad. So it's incredibly messy inside and outside. So that is going to be really difficult. And when we think about this from a US Policy perspective, the answer can't just be coercing our partner partners to stop doing things. There has to be a much more material vision for how we can secure that territory in a way that simply gets everyone on the same page because it's ineffective. Everyone wants the war to end. There's no one at this point who wants to see this continue. But how everyone can get their foot out of the bear trap is really the hard piece. And we certainly have a role to play there.
- [45:06]
A
How fair is the criticism coming, maybe over the weekend, just this past Friday, about China being able to broker some. It looks like a ceasefire, maybe that they'll agree to at least through the end of this year, but maybe longer. The potential absence of the US in that deal and it following China's brokering of Iran and Saudi Arabia's normalization, I.
- [45:34]
B
Don'T think there would be anything better if they were successful. I mean, right now, literally there is. I mean, I'm sure Ukraine is probably, unfortunately, closely creeping up, but in terms of the per capita number of people in the world who are food insecure, who don't have access to basic resources, I don't think any country holds a candle to Yemen. So putting aside the global chess game of power and intrigue and who's got influence and who can do things if we're, if we want to actually elevate the priority which is saving you many lives, I'm rather agnostic in terms of who can successfully negotiate what if China can play a role that's positive, that helps end the internal conflict between these partners, that then allows some reconstruction to take hold and Yemen to rebuild in a way that saves Yemenis and provides them a future that's Better than this. Yalla, let's go for it.
- [46:27]
C
I also think this really underscores the productive role China can really play in a situation like this. Because the one thing that from my understanding of where the contours of the steel look like they're going to be, if we see the ceasefire become the contours of a permanent arrangement, which is often the case, whether by intent or by inertia, you see a ceasefire kind of draw the lines about how a conflict ends. It ends with the Houthis controlling a good chunk of Yemen in a way that positions them to potentially launch rockets into Saudi Arabia, as we've seen them do in the past, and threaten maritime shipping and take other actions that have been a big legitimate security dilemma. If perhaps, perhaps a self created or self aggravated one on the part of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries involved in the Yemen conflict, the one thing China might be able to do is by putting pressure on Iran to limit the Houthis ability to do that by limiting arms sales, limiting other forms of support they provided the Houthis. That's one element where the United States has been pretty actively engaged. They really have not played a direct role in the hostilities. There's been targeting support, refueling support arms sales, controversial behaviors at different stripes of the conflict. One thing they have been more engaged on is trying to stop arms imports into Yemen because in part there's a UN Security Council regime that even predates the conflict that is supposed to be limiting those sorts of imports. And Iran hasn't really stopped Iran. Iran's been able to pull it off anyway. So it's not clear to me what the United States or the Gulf countries could really do to really hold Iran to account further if they started violating this. Pulling China into the picture actually changes the calculus for Iran a little bit. All of a sudden you've got another actor who has a lot more political and economic levers that might be able to be used more effectively to curtail Iran's behavior. Again, the United States can't do that because we've got such an already heavily loaded relationship with Iran because of maximum sanctions, even though that was the last administration's priority. But heavy level sanctions because of our long, difficult relationship, China adds a lot to that formula. So that way it's a very productive addition. I hope people see it that way if it's willing to play that role. That role is not always cheap, it's not always easy. I don't know if we've actually seen China be willing to do that because again, we didn't really see China make a huge effort to achieve these outcomes. I really think a lot of these are outcomes that are happening with China's role because Saudi Arabia has decided we're willing to take this step and China is a convenient party to pull into the picture. We don't want to do it with the United States. The United States doesn't add as much. But did China drive these things to this outcome? I'm not sure they did. Maybe there's something happening behind the scenes we don't see and they deserve more credit than I'm giving them. But barring that, that the real moment of testing them will come later when the parameters of whatever potential peace arrangement get tested and then to see what China does to keep them in place.
- [49:14]
B
That's exactly right. I mean, everything that has come to China thus far has really come to China and it's all been good news. What happens the day that China actually needs to enforce an agreement or otherwise try to compel its partners to keep the peace? I think the open question is what does China want out of all this? Is it just an opportunity to wave to the crowd and take a victory lap, or is there actually a real movement and shift such that they want to be involved in enforcing stability in this region, whether it's for altruism's sake or because they actually now do see a vested interest in greater stability in the Middle East?
- [49:54]
A
So what should we look out for when it comes to oil and OPEC and the way that the US and China, China will or will not use this moment for the financial aspect of all of this?
- [50:08]
C
Well, I would say I'm not sure. China and the United States have wildly divergent interests in the oil domain as well. They're both energy importers, major energy importers. They've got a shared interest in relatively low global prices. Saudi Arabia is often on the other side of that. They want to get the maximum bang for their buck for the energy exports they produce. That's particularly true because they see the end of their role as the king petrol economy on the horizon. We don't know when, but at some point, some combination of the shift away from reliance on fossil fuels and declining supply of fossil fuels, although that's still a ways off at this point, will mean the end of their economic model. And they're trying to diversify in some very idiosyncratic ways like crazy macro tourism and a variety of other sort of things. They're building in with these big projects like NEOM and things like that, that. But I think the key point here is that they're on the opposite end of the equation with the other oil generating companies in opec. The one complicating factor is Russia and Ukraine because Russia generally, I think, is okay seeing higher prices. It diminishes the price between their pricing cap and the global market. It also means more importantly perhaps that so long as Russia's energy is not on the global market, which would lower prices if it were made more available, that means that it's just more costly for the west and European countries to engage economic behavior. And maybe China is more on board with Russia for the moment over the Ukraine conflict. But I think to paint what Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members decided the past week or two about cutting production to keep oil prices high, that's just what OPEC does. I don't think that's uniquely in China's interest in any way. While maybe it's more okay with the United States because of Ukraine and Russia right now, I suspect in a lot of other circumstances they'd have a lot of the same reservations. Does that sound right to you, Jonathan?
- [52:00]
B
Yeah. No, I mean, ultimately MBS and the Emirates particularly need to find a way to pay for all of this stuff. He's making huge capital investments throughout Saudi Arabia. It's incredibly expensive. And that Transition Vision 2030, all of these projects require cash on hand. We're sort of at this point where I totally agree China and the US want to see cheap energy. Obviously it's beneficial domestically at the pump, but also it keeps the pressure and limits the capacity of Russia and their activities in Ukraine if they can't generate revenue through oil sales or as much revenue. Similarly true, there's this interesting little factor that sanctions on Iran has made Iranian oil, which is gray market oil at best incredibly cheap. So actors have been purchasing at great, great discount. So the oil still finds a way to market. It's just at a price that really doesn't provide much currency capacity to Iran and still allows there to be a lot of world supply. And so this is sort of this game by which we're all trying to keep the world supply relatively high. But of course the producers want to be able to extract enough cash from it for their own interests. Scott's right. This isn't fundamentally a new problem. This is just sort of a continuation. And there are just new objectives for which people want to use that cash, whether it's to fund a war in Ukraine or build NEOM and other projects. This is where we're at.
- [53:41]
A
I think we Had a pretty balanced conversation, but I am cognizant that there's not a specific China person here to maybe give more China, China's point of view, just to maybe end off with maybe an ode to that idea. What would China need to do moving forward, maybe from the US perspective or other perspectives to make it seem like they really are building their power in the region and give more credence to what message they might want to be building across the world. But what would be an actual inflection point in China's role in the region, do you think? Because they might say they've already done that a little bit. Right. And I mean, especially when it comes to Yemen, they will have said, look, this is something that we were. The thawing that we set off has led to this really important moment. So what's a real metric for that?
- [54:39]
C
So we've seen China do this before in the 1970s, it was the first time China really pivoted to the Middle east and tried to build relationships with states there. Prior to that, during the Cultural Revolution era, we saw China support revolutionary movement in Yemen, a few other parts around the region that were highly controversial, particularly a point of tension with Saudi Arabia and other the kind of conservative status quo monarchies. And so when they wanted to try and really reengage, China pursued a couple different fronts. Trade relationship, economic relationships. Very different than the national now, but worth noting. We can see elements of that already. Although Belt and Road, that kind of conventional approach I don't think works as well in a lot of the Middle east, particularly the Gulf, because they're not short on cash, they don't need a lot of investment financing. It's a very different sort of relationship. The second thing they did is that they really played on the fact that they were a substantially Muslim nation. You saw all of a sudden this kind of liberalization in interesting ways of China's own Muslim population and engagement between Chinese Muslim organizations and global Muslim organizations spearheaded by Saudi Arabia because of its role of having governance over Mecca and Medina and a central role it plays in global Muslim community. That's a really hard move for China to pull off now because of the way it's treating its Uyghur Muslim minority. It has, well documented, treated them horribly. That hasn't become the diplomatic issue it might be yet, in part because frankly, Gulf countries have proven fairly willing to overlook major human rights abuses. But I do think that sets real limits on the relationship at a certain point, in the same way that frankly, Israel's continued problematic and very Difficult relationship and poor treatment of Palestinians is always going to be a major barrier and possibly a kind of recurring third rail in the Abraham Accord effort and efforts to normalize with Israel, China, its treatment, its own Muslim minorities always is going to be that limiting factor and that that is going to pop up. And frankly, there are ways that the United States could and maybe should capitalize on that by pointing out a hypocrisy and really using the opportunity to push China on its own human rights record. Those are the two big ones. The third one though, that I would say Jonathan's already alluded to is that the United States built its relationship with a lot of Middle east countries, particularly the Gulf, on security relationship, US Troops, and then it's US hardware. That hardware is a unique type of good, which in a way people don't appreciate that it comes with a strong taste. When you sell somebody a jet, you're not selling someone a jet, you're selling someone a 10 year relationship, if not longer, where they're relying on you for parts, fuel, ammunition, maintenance, support expertise, software upgrades, hardware upgrades, all the things that come to having that jet. The Gulf countries and Mutati Arabia in particular are still very much on that relationship. That is a dependency. When you see them seriously make an effort to get off of it, that's a sign that they're seriously realigning. Right now, the core parameters of the US relationship are still in place. No one's appeared to be going somewhere. I guess security cooperation in terms of intelligence sharing might be another one, but that appears to be very solidly in place. There's lots of other parts of relationship that are important that might be compromised a little bit, but that's still the foundational aspect. I think until you really see Saudi Arabia moving away from that, its core security function, its core national security elements, it's still putting all those chips in the US basket.
- [57:54]
B
That is a hugely important point. I think it's important to note that right now it isn't necessarily the Saudis or any Gulf partner is the one that's actively or has been actively looking to move away from US security. I would say almost most recently it has. But all the talk in Washington how we need to be the partner of choice, we're the partner of choice. The truth of the matter is that foreign military sales to most of these countries has fallen through the floor the last 10 years. And it's not because they don't want to buy it. It's because politically we haven't wanted to sell it. Whether it was Civilian casualties in Yemen as a part of the Yemen conflict. Chopping up Jamal Khashoggi. Other internal human rights concerns. Congress has been otherwise very, very reluctant to advance military sales at a level that it did in past decades. So much so that right now, what we saw in October was that when this OPEC decision came out and it was adverse to Washington, both the White House and senior members of Congress almost reflexively were throwing their hands up saying, why do we support them? Why do we do anything? I thought the deal was security in exchange for oil. But from the perspective of these Gulf partners, there hasn't been much security in the way of sales forthcoming for quite some time. Whether or not not the US ultimately makes a decision, whether it wants to embrace them, I think we need to have an honest look at this dissonance in the messaging versus what's actually happening. They've been not unclear about what they want from the West. They would like a security guarantee along the lines of Article 5 NATO. And short of that, or in addition to that, they want to buy our stuff. Now, what has happened most recently is that they're looking elsewhere. They've grown tired of waiting. And so we won't sell advanced UAV technology to many of these countries. Baycar, the Turkish company that got famous from the TB2 in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, and then in Ukraine, I think they're building three factories in the Gulf. You can't buy a TB2 for two or three years. I think there's a waiting list that long. Other countries will fill the gap. The question becomes, what is our role here, if not to be the partner of choice? So again, if we ultimately decide no, we need to see this region through the lens strictly of human rights and no sales until we see tangible improvement on all things human rights. We should have an honest conversation about that and then change our strategy to reflect that. That's what we're going to do. Because right now we have this dissonance between our policy and our politics, which is ultimately going to cause us to leave this strategy on the side of the road. Road if we can't square with ourselves what it is we want from this region.
- [60:45]
A
Right, of course. Because we've always predicated our relationships on human rights and other moral things, where China, of course, is not necessarily known to do that. So will Iran be at the Arab League meeting in May? Do you think it's going to happen?
- [61:04]
B
No. Yeah, I don't think so. To the point of about what's coming next. Again, China has absolutely taken every opportunity to play the role of bell at the ball on the diplomatic scene. But the rubber is going to meet the road here the day that someone says, well, what are you going to enforce? Are you going to restrict the flow of economic goods across between China and Iran? Are you going to help the west west enforced sanctions if various partners here are not meeting their obligations under your agreement? We haven't seen China have to play the bad guy in this diplomatic role, so we'll have to watch. But it's certainly they've bought off a lot. I don't know if they're going to choke on all this because the Mideast is a really complicated place and it's to say, blinding flash of the obvious.
- [62:06]
A
Well, I think we'll leave it at that then. Thanks so much for your time.
- [62:09]
C
Thank you, thank you.
- [62:14]
A
The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter@patreon.com lawfair. You'll also get to access access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other podcasts including Rational Security, Chatter, Allies and the Aftermath. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series on the government's response to January 6th. Check out our written work at Lawfare Blog. The podcast is edited by Jen Pacha Howell and your audio engineer. This episode was Kara Schellen of Goat Rodeo. Our music is performed by Sophia Yan. As always, thank you for listening.
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