The only thing Saudi Arabia and Iran<\/a> truly share is China. It is the largest buyer of oil from both countries and is also suffering from the war, including supply disruptions and its broader effects. Gasoline prices have risen by roughly a third, while Chinese exports to Arab markets have fallen, though China\u2019s economy continues to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n China is more directly concerned with energy and maritime security in the Middle East than any other major power because it is the principal importer of regional oil, whereas the US no longer buys Gulf oil and has become the world\u2019s largest producer and exporter.<\/p>\n Yet despite the scale of Beijing\u2019s interests in the region, its policy differs so sharply from Washington\u2019s that it can sometimes be difficult for us to understand.<\/p>\n America\u2019s regional posture has been clear, particularly since Britain\u2019s withdrawal from east of Suez: protect the flow of energy and contain Communist expansion. Nixon backed both Iran and Saudi Arabia as regional pillars, followed later by the Carter Doctrine, which explicitly committed the US to using military force to protect the Gulf.<\/p>\n The Middle East matters enormously to China, but Beijing still does not behave as the guarantor of its own interests. It operates the world\u2019s largest tanker fleet, yet its ships wait outside the Strait of Hormuz. It has naval forces in the Gulf of Aden near areas controlled by Yemen\u2019s Houthi militia, but even amid attacks, those Chinese forces have not engaged them; Chinese tankers have simply waited offshore.<\/p>\n Chinese leaders likely prefer to avoid direct involvement in the US-Iran war and perhaps see some advantage in weakening the Trump administration by declining to intervene against Tehran.<\/p>\n Iran has now begun allowing some Chinese vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, but this gesture came late, after the Americans established a safer maritime corridor through Omani waters.<\/p>\n That alternative route prompted Tehran to go to Baghdad last week and persuade Iraqi authorities to exempt its oil tankers from attacks if they continued using the Iranian-controlled passage, after most shipping had already abandoned it for the Omani corridor.<\/p>\n The war will end sooner or later \u2013 perhaps now, perhaps in a year \u2013 but over the longer term China will likely follow the path once taken by Britain and the US in defending their interests: a larger navy, more bases, defense agreements, and a more openly partisan policy.<\/p>\n But not yet. For now, China coexists with American dominance because, first, it benefits from Washington securing the continued flow of oil, and second, because its primary geopolitical concerns lie elsewhere: Taiwan, the South and East China Seas, and then the Pacific and Indian Oceans.<\/p>\n This is why Barack Obama once described China as a \u201cfree rider,\u201d benefiting from American protection of maritime routes.<\/p>\n Chinese policy feels strange to us because historically we were accustomed to an old international system in which states aligned clearly with one camp or another: France or Britain, Axis or Allies, the Soviet Union or the US. China is rising rapidly as a great power but has not yet reached the stage where it forces others to choose sides.<\/p>\n That does not mean Beijing<\/a> has no alliances or positions; it certainly has adversaries in its immediate geopolitical environment. In the Middle East and Africa, however, China remains \u201ceveryone\u2019s friend,\u201d which makes its policy easy to deal with but difficult to interpret.\u00a0<\/p>\n It appears contradictory: the largest buyer from warring Gulf states, the biggest trading partner of both Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel\u2019s second-largest trading partner, and at the same time a supporter of the Palestinian cause. The dull neutrality we see today will likely diminish as Chinese interests grow and increasingly collide.<\/p>\n The war in Iran is already testing that posture. So far, China has not been forced to abandon its public neutrality, though it may do so if the conflict widens and drags on. That does not negate the fact that Beijing is quietly providing Iran with limited assistance without openly challenging the American blockade<\/a>. China would like to see US President Donald Trump<\/a> defeated, but it also understands that the nature of the Tehran regime creates instability that harms Chinese interests.<\/p>\n Iran, for its part, regards China as its only true ally and seeks its support, while viewing Russia more as a temporary partner of convenience because of long-standing differences.<\/p>\n Arab states, especially those in the Gulf, have built deep economic ties with Beijing and are trying to draw it closer, or at least neutralize it, with some success.<\/p>\n China repeatedly says it does not want to become \u201canother America,\u201d meaning another hegemonic power. Yet there is enough evidence to suggest the dragon empire is coming. It has already built its first military base in our region in Djibouti, south of the Red Sea, and deploys warships near its entrance, where they once helped combat Somali piracy.<\/p>\n If the Americans eventually withdraw, China will be compelled to fill at least part of the vacuum.<\/p>\n \u2013 Abdulrahman Al-Rashed\u00a0<\/p>\n A tale of two cities: Paris to Tehran<\/p>\n Al-Bayan, UAE, August 31<\/p>\n When I read Charles Dickens\u2019s A Tale of Two Cities as a student, I did not understand why it had been included in the curriculum. Like many others, I assumed the purpose was simply to teach us some English through an engaging story set between Paris and London.<\/p>\n It took years, and a different kind of experience, to understand that language may have been the least important thing about the novel. Dickens was asking a much larger question: What happens when injustice accumulates until it explodes, and then the oppressed, once they gain power, become even more brutal than their former oppressors?<\/p>\n Dickens wrote the novel in the mid-19th century, but set it against the French Revolution. He portrayed a society whose balance had collapsed: an aristocracy detached from ordinary people, humiliating poverty, absent justice, and anger building beneath the surface.<\/p>\n The explosion was predictable, but the genius of the novel lies not simply in describing the revolution, but in what came after it. Those who had suffered injustice did not automatically become more just once they gained power; some carried the memory of their pain and transformed it into a project of revenge.<\/p>\n I thought of A Tale of Two Cities while watching Iran today. The Iranian Revolution was built, among other things, on grievances over repression, prisons, and the absence of accountability. But almost half a century later, the question is simple: What did the oppressed do once they became rulers?<\/p>\n An Iranian who knew both the shah\u2019s prison and the revolution\u2019s prison once told me something that stayed with me: \u201cThe shah\u2019s prison, harsh as it was, was relatively better than the revolution\u2019s prison.\u201d<\/p>\n This is not a defense of the shah or an attempt to beautify a period in which injustice unquestionably existed. It is a question about a regime that came promising to remove oppression, only to expand its instruments and grant them a new legitimacy.<\/p>\n That testimony brings me back to Ehsan Naraghi\u2019s book From Palace to Prison: Inside the Iranian Revolution. The title alone almost summarizes the tragedy: a person moves from a regime that fell because of its abuses to a new one that promised salvation, only to find himself imprisoned once again. The guards and slogans changed; the monopoly on truth remained.<\/p>\n Dickens did not portray Paris alone. He set London beside it, and London was hardly free of poverty. The difference was that British society possessed internal mechanisms that allowed, however slowly, for review and reform.<\/p>\n That comparison is useful if we transfer it, with all due regard for different times and circumstances, to our own region. Look at Tehran today, then look at any Gulf capital. The comparison is not between one perfect society and another evil one, but between two approaches: one turns grievance into a permanent source of political legitimacy, while the other tries to change, correct itself, and open doors toward the future.<\/p>\n This is not to say that Gulf experiences have reached some final destination; every human experiment remains open to development. What matters is direction.<\/p>\n In Gulf cities, one sees investment in education, urban development, the economy, openness to the world, and an effort to anticipate the future and accumulate development expertise.<\/p>\n In Tehran, by contrast, much of the state\u2019s energy is still consumed protecting an ideological, missionary narrative, manufacturing enemies, and expanding costly influence beyond its borders through interference in other countries\u2019 affairs.<\/p>\n One side asks, in varying degrees: How can we live better tomorrow? The other remains captive to historical slogans completely disconnected from the age we live in and from the direction of the rest of the world.<\/p>\n Worse still, the politics of grievance did not remain confined within Iran\u2019s borders; they were exported across the region under the banner of \u201cresistance.\u201d Societies in Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon have paid enormous prices, even as the Iranian citizen continues to pay for the project at home. Each time citizens demand more room to live, they are suppressed.<\/p>\n Here Dickens returns to us, more than a century and a half later. Having suffered injustice does not grant anyone permanent moral immunity, and the oppressed do not automatically become just once they reach power. The real test begins on the day you acquire the ability to oppress others \u2013 and decide not to. \u2013 Mohammed Al-Rumaihi\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s elections: Leadership crisis, uncertain strategic horizon<\/p>\n Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, August 31<\/p>\n Israel enters its October 27 election at one of the most sensitive moments of political and strategic transformation in its history.<\/p>\n The vote comes after the shock of Oct. 7, a prolonged war in Gaza, and the expansion of confrontation to Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, all amid deepening internal division over the nature of the state, the limits of authority, and the relationship between security and democracy.<\/p>\n The election is therefore not only about who will govern Israel next, but about what kind of Israel will emerge: one increasingly dependent on military force and religious nationalism, or one seeking to rebuild a political and social balance capable of translating military power into sustainable security and stability.<\/p>\n The 2026 election also carries special significance because it will be the first since 1988 to take place on schedule, after the 25th Knesset completed its full legal term following years of electoral instability.<\/p>\n Yet completing a term does not mean the political system\u2019s crisis has ended; rather, it shows the government\u2019s ability to survive despite the profound divisions surrounding it. The paradox is that temporal stability did not produce political or strategic stability.<\/p>\nINSIDE TEHRAN: Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev pays respects to Iran\u2019s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, July 3. (credit: Sputnik\/Oleg Molchanov\/Pool via REUTERS )<\/p>\n