Global corridors collide in Middle East amid Israel-Hamas war - opinion

• Published date: 11 March 2024
• Author: SALEM ALKETBI
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

This has been particularly true since the Obama administration focused its efforts on signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, paving the way for the US to reduce its interest in the Middle East and the Gulf region and focus on the Asia First strategy

This direction has led to Iran having a free hand in the Middle East and even openly boasting that it controls four Arab capitals and is preparing to occupy the fifth, in a region that has long been one of the main pillars of American influence and dominance in the new global system.

What has happened in recent years is not so much a decline in American power but, rather, a decline in the willingness and ability of the US to use its power to defend its interests in the region. The quantitative and qualitative indicators continue to reflect the gap in the balance of power between the US and its allies and strategic competitors.

It is against this background that the dimensions of the economic corridor projects between East and West can be understood, in particular the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, in which the Middle East is a central pivot, versus the economic corridor connecting India to Europe via the Gulf, Jordan, and Israel.

Two strategic projects

The Middle East, or a large part of it, is the common denominator of the two strategic projects. There are several strategic issues at stake in these projects, the main one being that they are an expression of competition between the US and China.

The US-backed economic corridor, launched about a full decade after the Belt and Road project began, is of deep import to Washington because it has strategic dimensions that are as significant to the US as the economic and commercial interests the corridor represents to everyone from India to European countries.

Although the Belt and Road link is a gigantic project involving 155 countries around the world, the economic corridor is an invaluable soft power lever that can change the geopolitical scene in the Middle East. The two driving forces behind the projects, China and the US, have different and intertwined strategic visions.

While the US project is linked to US efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Chinese mediation, which has succeeded in reconciling the positions of Riyadh and Tehran and bringing them closer together, is not detached from preparing opportunities for the success of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Observers agree that this mediation has strengthened...