China’s brokering a deal between arch rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia on March 10 was the result of converging economic interests, according to experts on the Middle East. The deal also helps each of the totalitarian nations to avoid any potential wave of democratic regime change.
“China, diplomatically, has always been at ease with unrepresentative, illiberal politics, whether a conservative monarchy as Saudi Arabia or a radical theocracy as Iran,” Middle-East expert Burzine Waghmar told The Epoch Times in an email. Waghmar is a Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), as well as at the Center for Iranian Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
