Successive Democratic and Republican administrations have damaged U.S. credibility in the Middle East because of their frequent re-evaluating and changing of policies toward Iran, according to an opinion piece published by the Saudi Arabia-based Arab News website on Monday.
The economic cost of the Ukrainian conflict, failure to find a solution to the Palestinian issue, support for the so-called Arab Spring and domestic polarization have further undermined U.S. credibility in the region, according to the article, which was written by Mohammed Al-Sulami, director of the International Institute for Iranian Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The writer said “both the neoconservative failure to change the region through wars and the Democratic approach of promoting U.S. influence while not prioritizing its allies and partners in the region” have contributed to its decline in the Middle East.
In contrast, the Chinese investments in different countries have laid the groundwork for Beijing to “shift from soft power to geoeconomics and geopolitics,” Al-Sulami wrote.
China’s rising influence in the Middle East has to be understood through the perspective of its economic ties with countries in the region, the article said, adding that such an economic approach is “very different from the U.S. policy of projecting military power against weak regional adversaries, such as the Taliban in 2001 and the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.”
