Rarely is a handshake the same as a slap in the face. But when the national security advisers of Saudi Arabia and Iran shook hands in Beijing last Friday, it delivered a stinging blow in Washington DC that echoed in the world’s capitals.
As the United States stays bogged down in its efforts to degrade Russia as a world power, at the expense of Western treasure and Ukrainian lives, not to speak of global growth and deprivation in swathes of Africa, China, identified by the Americans as their systemic rival, has won a decisive round in West Asia in its ongoing contestation of US hegemony of the global order.