CHINA'S PRESIDENT XI DESERVES NOBEL FOR DEFUSING MIDDLE EAST POWDER KEG.

KARACHI -- China has pulled off a spectacular diplomatic surprise at a time when the United States and its NATO allies are sleepwalking into a third world war over Ukraine. Beijing brokered an unexpected rapprochement between the two Middle Eastern heavyweights, Saudi Arabia and Iran, who have long been engaged in proxy wars to undercut each other's efforts for hegemony in a region fraught with a bruising turf war.

They have now agreed to restore full diplomatic relations broken off by Saudi Arabia following the ransacking of its embassy in Tehran by a vigilante mob over the execution of a dissident Shiite cleric Nimr el-Nimr in January 2016. The deal, officially named 'Joint Trilateral Statement', binds each side to 'respect the principles of sovereignty and non-interference' in the other's internal affairs. It also seeks to revive a moribund 2001 security cooperation accord, as well as a 1998 pact on trade, economy, and investment between them.

In a quick follow-up to the Beijing breakthrough, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz invited Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Riyadh which, according to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, he has accepted.

Why it is significant?

The Gulf states, oil behemoths but military minnows, had scaled back relations with Tehran to appease their Arab big brother in 2016, though some of them have recently mended the ties. All of these monarchies, especially the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, have greeted the Saudi-Iran detente with optimism, as did Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey.

More importantly, the deal has been hailed by the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Apparently, the Middle East is having an epiphany that war and conflict would only perpetuate instability in the region already wrecked by decades of turbulence spawned by the American imperialist approach.

The Iran-Saudi relationship has long been troubled by mutual distrust and acrimony as both vied for the leadership of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, a leading Sunni Muslim power, looks at Iran, a Shiite theocracy, as revisionist that sows chaos through the non-state proxies it controls in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and seeks to export its 'revolution' to other Muslim states. Iran, on the other hand, considers Riyadh as a rival which has for decades sided with the United States and other Western powers hostile towards the Islamic Republic. For this reason, the two states have...