China's Special Envoy to the Middle East Zhai Jun is criss-crossing the Middle East in an effort to support regional peace efforts, but their continued lean towards the Palestinian side may have unintended consequences. 

The Gaza War and Iran’s role in it may indeed provide Iran with new opportunities and leverage to use against its neighbors, but it will not brake Iran’s continued decline.

With the Gaza crisis now in its third week, most media attention, in the West at least, is focused on the hard choices facing Israel and its ally, the United States. Israel, understandably, wants to destroy Hamas, but it is doubtful whether such a goal can be achieved, and even if it can be, Israel needs to figure out how to govern Gaza once Hamas is gone.

China has taken a relatively neutral stance towards the recent violence in Gaza, refusing to condemn either Israel or Hamas outright, but focusing a great deal of attention on the Israeli occupation and lack of a Palestinian state as the root cause of the conflict. How will this balancing act affect its prospects in the region?

The brutality and violence of Hamas and Iran’s uncompromising support for it have become yet another issue dividing the regime from the people. The Nezam has made the destruction of Israel a pillar of its identity as a revolutionary regime, giving the Iranian people one more reason to reject the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic.

A central question is the degree of Iranian foreknowledge and active participation in the planning and organization of the Hamas offensive. As of this writing (podcast), the Israeli and US governments suspect an Iranian role, but admit that they have no evidence or proof of active Iranian involvement.

Whatever the calculations are that Khamenei and Ra’isi are turning over in their lizard brains, they are keeping their options open and their powder dry. The next few months may reveal how committed they are to détente with the Saudis and staying in good favor with China.

At the end of the day, faced with shrinking regional room to maneuver as the Middle East, true to historical form, becomes more penetrated by international players and increasingly independent and emboldened regional ones, Iran can be expected to resort to a “spoiler” strategy.

Bashar al-Assad has had a rough decade (to say the least), but on September 22nd, 2023, the future must have seemed bright for the once-disgraced Syrian president as he posed shaking hands with Xi Jinping at the West Lake State Guesthouse in Hangzhou. What are the implications of China's most recent diplomatic move in the Middle East?

The fact that unrest in Iran has been kept at bay while, at the same time, elite concern is rising suggests that the level of popular unrest is not the metric we need to watch, but the level of elite unrest.