(By Massimiliano D'Elia) A multipolar world, this is how Xi Jinping's China understands it, which wants to have an ever greater impact on international disputes to protect its strategic and economic interests. Xi recently proposed 12 points for peace between Russia and Ukraine and concretely favored the once unthinkable rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Discontinued since 2016, the March 10 last (Joint Trilateral Statement) the turning point with the resumption of diplomatic relations and the announcement of the opening of the embassies in the two countries of the Persian Gulf.
Xi in his pacifist version wants to actively participate in global management in order to ensure stability and positive energy for world peace.
What is certain is that while on the one hand Xi wants to promote peace and détente, especially in distant countries, in the Indo-Pacific area he has remained aggressive and suspicious. At the top of his mind is the age-old controversy over the island of Taiwan.
La China in Middle East as in Africa it is trying to grab important chunks of influence in areas where Westerners and Americans have shown disinterest. Even if the United States maintains, together with its allies, military bases guarding the Gulf, today interest is all shifted towards the center of Europe due to the Russian aggression against Ukraine and towards the Indo-Pacific for counter Chinese and North Korean pretensions.
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Fostering dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia, however, is good for everyone. To China (in primis) but also to the two main countries of the Persian Gulf which must put aside their political and religious rivalries to focus on new commercial outlets and new economic prospects given that, within a decade, the global reversal towards electricity, i.e. towards solutions environmentally sustainable could create many problems for them, given that they base their economy mostly on oil revenues.
Today, China is the main buyer of Gulf oil with around 30% worldwide, adding up the quantities received from Iran and Saudi Arabia.
We can say that a truce has begun between the Iranian Shiites and the Saudi Sunnis and not peace because it is not easy to forget over a millennium of violent confrontations, which have never died down. Saudi support for Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran and more recently the struggle for control of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq are not situations that play in favor of the imperishable détente that appears to be emerging these days. Another friction is the declared Saudi aversion to the Iranian nuclear program. We will see!!!
Shiites and Sunnis
Born among the nomadic peoples of the Arab peninsula in the seventh century after Christ, the Muslim faith did not have dogmatic distinctions, like Judaism. In an article in the Sole24Ore, the story that has marked the two factions of the religion that welcomes the largest number of faithful in the world is told in a truly compelling way. Between the third and fourth Caliph, a few decades after Mohammed's death, there was the "great sedition" between Sunnis and Shiites that continues to this day.
The dispute is of purely political origin and centers on the legitimacy of the temporal power of the Prophet's successors, the guides or imams. Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, 'Ali son of Abu Talib had in fact been among the first to adhere to Islam. However, his young age prevented him from becoming the head of the Islamic Umma and he had to wait his turn after two of Muhammad's in-laws - Abu Bakr and Omar - were elected as Caliphs based on seniority hierarchies.
History repeats itself even today. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, to avoid claims to the throne by two of his uncles, had them arrested on corruption charges (they are relegated to two five-star hotels).
Othmàn, another son-in-law of the Prophet, was elected as the third Caliph, but he died a violent death due to internal strife within the community due to the latter's nepotism. When his time finally came, 'Ali found himself having to deal with his predecessor's relatives who did not want to accept him as their boss as they were favored in the office by a blood crime that he would not have been prompt enough to punish. The birth of the shì'at 'Ali (the 'party' of 'Ali) therefore had as its only cause a dispute over the legitimacy of a political role. However, already among his first and enthusiastic supporters, apparently not too welcome by himself, a theory soon established itself which claimed to reserve the office of Caliph only to the blood descendants of Muhammad (who had no male children who survived him) called “people of (his) house” or Ahl al-bayt.
Therefore belonging to the Hashemite clan, a branch of the Coreish tribe that already dominated Mecca in the pre-Islamic period, to which the Prophet belonged, hence the attribute of 'Hashemite' of today's Kingdom of Jordan, not Shiite but of relatives of Mohammed. A religious character was soon added to the dispute over the legitimate succession as 'Ali and his descendants were also held to possess a special "charisma" which made them unique and infallible interpreters of the "hidden" or esoteric meaning of the Koranic text. Next to Mohammed, therefore, a companion who held functions that went far beyond his mere political function was revealed.
The typically tribal and genealogical clash thus finally turned into a schism that persists to this day.
Iran has always opposed the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, also clashing with the Ottoman Turks in the Islamic period. Today the dispute manifests itself in the Shiite Hezbollah of Lebanon, in the Shiite but Arab and not Persian majority of Iraq, in the 'Alawite regime (from 'Ali) of Syria, but also in the civil war that divides Yemen and in the problems of the of the Gulf where the Shiites are present if not prevalent, such as Bahrain and Oman, within Saudi Arabia itself and in local situations that are no less relevant but unacknowledged such as in Pakistan and Afghanistan.