Protests erupted across the region last week in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s execution of a leading Shiite cleric.
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After consulting with Iranian authorities, the German top diplomat will depart for Riyadh to attend Janadriyah cultural festival and confer with Saudi officials on Tehran-Riyadh relations.
In the January 10 op-ed, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused Saudi Arabia of “sponsoring extremists and promoting sectarian hatred” in the region.
The Middle East, however, is fraught with risk for China, a country that has little experience navigating the religious and political tensions that frequently afflict the region. “They will effectively leave others, from Mexico to shale producers, short of equity and debt access”.
Hang on, Aramco doesn’t just have lots of Crude Oil, it has easily exploited reserves, which makes it cheaper to lift the Black Gold out of the ground in Saudi Arabia than nearly anywhere else in the world.
Several Arab countries followed suit and severed or reduced relations with Iran.
Last week, a Chinese envoy visited Saudi Arabia and Iran, where he called for both countries to exercise calm and restraint amid their on-going feud. In October, Iran tested a ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in contravention of Security Council resolutions. It now owns Assad’s bloody mess in Syria and is a target for Sunni jihadists to an extent that it was not a year ago. “When I read the Iranian foreign minister’s article in the New York Times, I thought the author was the foreign minister of a Scandinavian country”, he tweeted in Arabic to 2.5 million followers, signing off with an grinning emoji. Various Iranian officials criticized the manner in which the Saudi government has conducted the investigation into the causes of the stampede while others suggested that the administration of the Hajj should be taken over by an global body representing Islamic countries.
US lawmakers from both parties have introduced an array of bills in recent days to punish Iran for the missile tests.
The UK government has been put on notice that it is in breach of worldwide lawfor allowing the export of British-made missiles and military equipment to Saudi Arabia that might have been used to kill civilians.
“We support Saudi forces through long-standing, pre-existing arrangements”, a spokesman said, adding that the objective of training was to ensure “best practice” and compliance with worldwide humanitarian law. And that is happening, now. the sanctions are set to begin lifting on Monday, 18 January. Existing sanctions against Iran are due to be eased in the coming weeks under the terms of the nuclear deal.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (l) meets with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on September 3, 2015, in Washington, DC. In the United States, lifting that same barrel of oil could cost anywhere from $25 – 80. “So stability in the Middle East is what China would most like to see”.
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Kerry said governments wouldn’t be intimidated. This accorded Russian Federation the enviable status of an honest broker with all the freedom of maneuver it wanted, while the United States had boxed itself into a rigid anti-Iran alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
