Opinion | Saudi-Iran deal is a stepping stone for China in its global role as honest broker

China’s success as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia is more than a milestone. It is also a stepping stone leading to higher expectations: can China help similarly elsewhere?

In the Middle East, where it is sometimes said that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, there are enough troubles for Beijing to address. Being the only major power that befriends everybody thanks to its policy of non-alliance and non-interference, China can probably further help with another more pressing problem – the Iranian nuclear issue.

The Trump administration withdrew from a nuclear pact in 2018 and negotiations between the Biden administration and Iran on restarting the nuclear deal have stalled. Perhaps Beijing, one of the negotiators of the deal struck in 2015, can first persuade Tehran behind closed doors – like it did with the Saudi-Iran deal – to not cross the threshold of making a nuclear bomb, before bringing together like-minded stakeholders, including Washington, to renegotiate a new deal with Tehran.

The situation is much more complicated in Ukraine where China’s two friends have been at each other’s throats. No one knows how long the war will last except that it will last.