Geostrategic shift
China is now Saudi Arabia’s largest energy partner, and its investments in the kingdom outpace those of all other countries. Chinese economic ties with other Gulf countries, and with Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan, are also growing. China has invested more than $56 billion in Pakistan as part of its Belt and Road Initiative and is discussing similar investment in trade and infrastructure in Iran. For China the Greater Middle East is a critical part of its vision for Eurasia, the landmass that would connect China’s economy to Europe.
Western China borders the Greater Middle East—a region of strategic significance, especially as China’s own domestic economic production moves westward from its eastern Pacific shores. China is hungry for the region’s vast energy resources, but also for its potential as a transit corridor that could balance out China’s current dependence on the Indian and Pacific oceans and the increasingly contentious maritime access points in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. The Arabian Peninsula is vital to East Asia’s trade with Africa and Europe, and Iran and Pakistan are unique corridors that connect Europe on one side and the Arabian Sea on the other to China through Central Asia or overland into Xinjiang.
Just as the US has shifted its gaze away from the Middle East to Asia, China is looking west to the Middle East. This coupling of the shifting interests of the world’s premier great powers constitutes the most significant change in the geopolitics of the Middle East for decades. China’s deeper engagement will have an economic impact, and—as evidenced by Beijing’s role in normalizing ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia—it will also contribute to a climate of greater economic interdependence within the region.
This geostrategic shift has been bolstered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, too. Russia was already deeply involved in the Middle East through its intervention in Syria’s civil war and its oil-production pact with Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The war has reduced Russian involvement in Syria but deepened its ties with Iran. Those ties are most evident in the military arena as Iranian drones and ordnance have contributed to Russia’s assault on Ukraine. But Russian dependence on Iran extends beyond military supplies. Moscow is increasingly looking to the transit corridor stretching from the port of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea through Iran to the port of Chahbahar on the Arabian Sea to trade with the world. Growing Russian trade has been important to Iran’s cash-strapped economy, but it has also connected Iran with port cities on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, which are a part of the emerging Russian trade network.
New pipelines
The same dynamic is at work in North Africa and the Levant, this time driven by Europe’s reaction to Russian aggression. As Europe weans itself off Russian oil and gas, it will inevitably depend to a greater extent on energy imports from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucasus and Central Asia. This will impact Algeria and Egypt, the region’s gas producers, first and foremost. But its broader implications for economic integration across the Mediterranean will benefit Morocco and Tunisia, which have been at the forefront of supply chains serving European economies. The energy connectivity is translating into plans for a network of pipelines to connect oil and gas from these sources to Europe. Türkiye sees a future as the transit hub for energy pipelines coming from the south and the east and on to Europe in the west. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are contemplating pipelines that would take their own oil and gas, as well as Iraq’s, to that Turkish hub.
These plans depend on resolution of conflicts in and between countries along the way. Economic interest would, in turn, foster interest in continued peace. This is perhaps a distant goal but not impossible to realize. In November 2022 Israel and Lebanon (with Hezbollah’s approval) signed a historic deal setting their borders in the Mediterranean—a necessary prelude to development of their respective gas fields. The United States helped negotiate that deal and, in recognition of these emerging trends, it hopes to supplant its own old order in the region with one that connects India to the Persian Gulf and Israel through a network of ports, roads, and railways. America’s vision is partly aimed at containment of Iran and China. But insofar as it relies on economic ties, it too will confirm the new geopolitical reality of the region.
As has happened so often throughout history, great power rivalries will shape the future of the Greater Middle East. Yet in this case they are working to bind countries closer together economically rather than wrenching them apart. This will open up new possibilities for the region.
