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Saudi Arabia and Iran’s China-Brokered Détente Doesn’t Upend Mideast Politics

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A man in Tehran holds a local newspaper reporting, under the headline “A Pan-Asian Agreement,” the China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore their diplomatic ties.
Photo: Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

When Iran and Saudi Arabia announced on Friday that they would restore diplomatic ties, ending a seven-year freeze, the real news seemed to be that this apparent breakthrough had been negotiated by China. Most coverage of the deal has highlighted Beijing’s role, adding nearly unanimous expert analysis describing the event as a sign of China’s rising clout in the Middle East, the waning influence of the U.S., and a diplomatic shake-up of historic proportions.

This reaction contains some truth, but it’s both overblown and premature. For one thing, the deal is a transactional agreement, not a wholesale reset. At best, it’s a small first step toward resolving the deep, long-standing tensions between Riyadh and Tehran. The rivals have agreed to reopen embassies and reactivate a lapsed security agreement, which could pave the way to ending their yearslong proxy war in Yemen. The China-brokered talks followed two years of efforts with Iraq and Oman serving as earlier intermediaries, so a lot of work had already been done before Beijing could claim credit for sealing the deal.

In terms of improving stability and security in the Middle East, the deal is good news, regardless of how it came about, especially for countries beset by Saudi-Iranian proxy conflicts in recent years (Yemen, most notably, but also Iraq and Lebanon). The U.S. reaction to the news has been cognizant of that fact. “This is not about China. We support any effort to de-escalate tensions in the region. We think that’s in our interests,” explained National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Obviously, it is at least a little bit about China, but equally obviously, the U.S. welcomes the potential for a de-escalation in the Yemeni civil war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions, and become what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

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That said, the conflict in Yemen is primarily among Yemenis, and the withdrawal of Saudi and Iranian involvement won’t necessarily bring it to a close. Saudi Arabia has been pushing for a deal with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are supported and armed by Iran, and what happened last week could be a prelude to Iran pressuring its Yemeni clients to take that deal. As The Economist has noted, Saudi Arabia might now have the opportunity for a “face-saving exit” from the conflict.

Iran could be looking for an off-ramp as well. The Islamic Republic faces more than enough domestic problems right now and may welcome an excuse to stop pouring resources into a foreign proxy war. On top of the unprecedented civil unrest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police, the isolated regime has had to contend with an unrelenting currency crisis that continues to batter the country’s already fragile economy, driving up costs of living and fueling further instability. Then there’s the latest crisis: an ongoing apparent terrorism campaign targeting girls’ schools with suspected poison attacks.

At the moment, Iran has limited options for finding international friends, and it needs all the support and leverage it can get. The war in Ukraine opened an opportunity for the regime to further its economic and military ties to Russia through arms sales, reinforcing a significant link in the emerging anti-Western bloc of middle-income countries with conservative, authoritarian governments. Iran’s defusing hostilities with Saudi Arabia and cementing ties with China, its top trade partner, may help to stabilize the regime amid these compounding crises.

From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, détente with Iran offers several benefits, starting with the chance to quit the war in Yemen, which has been expensive and damaging to its reputation. Saudi leadership hopes to put an end to Iran’s attacks on Saudi oil facilities and threats to blockade the Strait of Hormuz along with other low-scale acts of economic warfare. Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Iran to become more powerful, but neither does it want to see its rival collapse — just to be less of a thorn in its side. The less attention and money Saudi Arabia needs to devote to countering Iran, the more it can focus on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s massive internal social and economic reform projects. The optics of conducting foreign policy independently of U.S. interests and irritating Washington by cozying up to China are just gravy.

For the U.S., a Saudi-Iranian détente won’t fundamentally undermine its role in the Middle East, but it may complicate it to some degree. While President Biden’s main foreign-policy priorities lie elsewhere, his administration’s approach to the region remains focused on hindering Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and encouraging normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states. The previous administration made that first goal much harder when it abandoned the Obama-era nuclear deal, leaving substantial deficits of both leverage and trust in the already frosty U.S.-Iran relationship.

On the other hand, though Donald Trump may believe that the personal letters he received from Kim Jong-un were his crowning foreign-policy achievement, the 2020 Abraham Accords — in which Israel opened relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan — were his administration’s greatest diplomatic feat. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hoped to add Saudi Arabia to that list, but while the two countries have taken some steps toward normalization, an Israeli embassy is unlikely to open in Riyadh anytime soon.

The main barrier to Israeli-Saudi diplomacy at the moment is the fact that Israel’s new government, headed by Netanyahu, is a rogue’s gallery of ultranationalist, right-wing wackos who despise Arabs and aspire to annex the West Bank and snuff out any possibility of Palestinian statehood. That is the opposite of the kind of change Saudi Arabia would need to see to make normalization politically tenable.

Netanyahu (along with the Trump administration) had hoped that the two countries’ mutual enmity toward Iran could help bridge the gap, but Saudi Arabia is much less keen on igniting a full-on war with Iran than Israel is, and many Arab countries are loath to embrace a strategy for containing Iran led by Israel and the U.S. The shadow war Israel has been waging against Iranian military capabilities in Syria, Iraq, and increasingly within Iran itself may have the tacit approval of Washington, but it’s not winning friends in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.

Last week’s agreement simply underlines the fact that the kingdom is less willing to isolate and antagonize Iran than Israel is, and it’s no wonder the news was met with dismay in Jerusalem. An anonymous Israeli official was quoted as saying that it wouldn’t affect the bid for normalization with the Saudis, but again, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, as that effort was already going nowhere fast. It will likely remain dormant as long as Netanyahu remains dependent on a radical right-wing coalition — let alone busy fomenting his own domestic political crisis by trying to disempower the judiciary.

As far as China is concerned, its foreign ministry has denied any hidden motives in brokering the agreement, pushing back on the notion that it was asserting any kind of new role in the Mideast or taking advantage of a U.S.-influence vacuum. But Beijing not so subtly sought to call attention to the contrast between its approach to the region and that of the U.S.: “​​We respect the stature of Middle East countries as the masters of this region and oppose geopolitical competition in the Middle East,” the statement said. “China has no intention to and will not seek to fill a so-called vacuum or put up exclusive blocs.” China’s senior-most diplomat, Wang Yi, added that “this world has more than just the Ukraine question, and there are still many issues affecting peace and people’s lives.” It’s easy to interpret Wang’s reference to Ukraine as snark at the U.S. — as if to say, “You may be all-in on Russia and Ukraine right now, but we’re not.”

This messaging is consistent with how China has been recently marketing itself as a superpower ally to countries wary of being influenced by the U.S. With the exception of the Trump administration, which attempted a more ideologically neutral foreign policy, the benefits of being in the U.S.’s sphere of influence these days come with pressure to at least feign interest in human rights and liberal democracy. China’s sales pitch is that it can offer countries access to a market nearly as huge as the U.S. without all of that pesky scrutiny of human-rights records and authoritarianism.

In this framework, Iran and Saudi Arabia are both natural friends of China’s. Indeed, both countries are pursuing membership in the China-dominated BRICS association of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa. Through its expanding network of junior partners and client states, China is increasingly assertive in positioning itself as a global political player, whereas until recently, it preferred to focus almost exclusively on economic dominance and access to markets.

The big question remains as to whether Beijing is willing or able to back up its global ambitions with guns and ammo. China still appears reluctant to get tangled up in multilateral security partnerships like the U.S. has in the Middle East, Europe, and the Pacific. While China has become a more prominent arms dealer in the Middle East in the past few years, it still isn’t interested in making military commitments there or trying to take on more responsibility for its security. China has, thus far, held off on sending Russia weapons to use in Ukraine and denies plans to do so — despite growing concerns among U.S. and European leaders. The day may come when China assumes a more active role in securing the Middle East, but it’s doubtful that China’s leaders will seek one comparable to that of the U.S.

Hopefully, this nascent thaw between Saudi Arabia and Iran will endure and prompt further steps toward de-escalation — if for no other reason than the possibility that it will make the war in Yemen a little less awful. But their new agreement neither cements Chinese ascendency nor proves the U.S.’s decline. It is, rather, a small indicator of how COVID, Ukraine, and other international crises are edging the global order from the unipolar model of U.S. hegemony toward a more complex, possibly more chaotic, multipolar world.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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Federal government promising a 'renters' bill of rights' in upcoming budget – CBC.ca

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government will introduce new measures — including a new “bill of rights” — that he says will help protect those who rent their homes as part of the upcoming budget.

Trudeau said the new measures are specifically geared toward younger people, who are renting more than previous generations.

“It’s about changing the rules of the game in a way that meets young people where they are,” he said on Wednesday.

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Ottawa will work with provinces and territories to develop a “renters’ bill of rights” that would introduce a national standard lease agreement and implement requirements for landlords to disclose an apartment’s pricing history to allow tenants to negotiate their rent.

The new measures will also include a $15-million fund for provincial legal aid organizations that help tenants fight against “renovictions” and landlord abuse.

The Liberals are also proposing to change federal rules so that making rental payments on time will count toward someone’s credit scores, something Trudeau said is meant to help renters looking to one day buy a house.

“If you look at someone who pays a $2,000 [per month] mortgage, they’re getting recognition and credit for that from their bank as part of their credit score,” the prime minister said.

“But if you’re paying $2,000 a month on rent, you get no kudos.”

Typically the government doesn’t discuss what is in an annual budget until it is introduced in the House of Commons. But the announcement was made weeks prior to the release of the Liberals’ next budget, which is slated to drop on April 16.

Releasing tidbits from the budget ahead of time is part of a new communications strategy for the Liberals, sources told CBC News. Trudeau and his ministers are expected to make a number of similar announcements in the run-up to the budget, the sources said.

WATCH | Trudeau says new measures aim to help tenants: 

Liberals promise ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to fight housing crisis

5 hours ago

Duration 2:07

The Liberals are looking to create a ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to help deal with Canada’s housing crisis. Justin Trudeau says the plan is geared toward younger people suffering from a rising cost of living. The Conservatives call the measures meaningless.

Before revealing the planned rental measures on Wednesday, Trudeau took a moment to plug the April 16 fiscal plan, saying that the budget will be about “fairness.”

“For Canada to succeed, we need everyone to succeed,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland joined Trudeau for his announcement and hinted about further announcements ahead of budget day.

“Over the coming days and in the April budget, we are going to launch a no-holds-barred plan to wrestle down the cost of owning and renting a home,” she said.

Wednesday’s announcements came on the same day that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a report that found a surge in new apartment construction drove housing start increases in several major Canadian cities last year.

But the report also cautions that demand continues to outweigh supply.

The opposition Conservatives, who have enjoyed a healthy lead in recent polls, have made housing — and other cost-of-living issues — a key point of attack against the governing Liberals.

Following his announcement, Trudeau was asked whether he thinks he bears any responsibility for people feeling left behind in the current economy and whether the new measures would be enough to convince younger people to support him in the next election.

In response, Trudeau suggested that a recent rise in the cost of living is not unique to Canada.

“Young people who are key to our present, and obviously key to our future, are seeing a system that is stacked against them. That’s true in Canada but also true elsewhere around the world,” he said. “What we’re focused on now is making sure that young people can see their success in the economy.”

Opposition parties criticize Liberal announcement

Scott Aitchison, the Conservative housing critic, said Wednesday’s announcement was Liberal posturing that won’t get results.

“Today’s photo op is just another set of meaningless measures that won’t result in building the homes Canadians need,” he said in a statement.

NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan criticized the announcement for not going far enough.

“The Liberals are so out of touch with what Canadian renters are experiencing that they keep offering half-measures instead of a real action,” Kwan said in a statement.

The NDP is calling on the government to invest more in affordable housing while temporarily preventing for-profit firms from buying designated affordable-housing spaces.

WATCH | Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget: 

Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget

9 hours ago

Duration 11:39

The Liberal government unveiled three new proposals Wednesday to better protect renters in Canada. Power & Politics speaks to Marci Ien, minister of women, gender equality and youth, about the proposed protections.

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