Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Iran is helping Russia, so not sure how people see this as anything other than a complete disaster.
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Iran already had major deals with China in place.
As for the SA/Iran relationship, they opening embassies, not forming an alliance. The two countries are natural rivals, and until religion begins to play a much smaller role in the region, will always be each other's biggest enemies.
The only thing this possibly changes is that China may be gaining more influence over SA. Like I said before, if the USA is buying less Saudi oil that was inevitable.
As for Russia's involvement, this may actually weaken them. Russia is now relying on China to buy their fossil fuels, expanding SA's competition is only going to hurt roster bottom line. As it stands, SA was already a major supplier to China, this isn't some surprise new relationship either:
https://www.worldstopexports.com/top...iers-to-china/
On top of that SA sells a fraction of the oil to the USA it sells to China. Around 2019 the USA purchased about 1/3 of what China did, and now that ratio is even smaller:
https://www.reuters.com/article/saud...-idUKL2N26505N
I also don't see this as moving China closer to Russia. China hates Russia. China sees all Russian territories east of the Ural mountains as belonging solely to them. And Russia is to Mongolia as the USA is to South Korea. China is treating the Russian crisis as an opportunity for itself. It'll buy discounted oil from Russia, but isn't forging any kind of attachment.