The China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal has big repercussions for the Middle East — and the U.S.
A man in Tehran holds a local newspaper reporting on its front page the China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore ties, signed in Beijing the previous day, on March, 11 2023.
Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — When arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they were restoring diplomatic relations, much of the world was stunned — not only because of the breakthrough after years of mutual animosity, suspected attacks and espionage between the two countries, but because of who brokered the deal: China.
Taking up a specific role that the U.S. could not have fulfilled, this was Beijing’s first foray into Middle East mediation, an area that for the past few decades was largely occupied by Washington.
As tensions simmer between the world’s two largest economies and U.S. policymakers sound the alarm over competition and security concerns with China, what does Beijing’s ascendance in the region mean for the Middle East — and for U.S. interests?
“Many are breathing a sigh of relief [with] today’s official Iran-Saudi agreement,” Bader al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, wrote on Twitter after the news was announced. “All 3 parties to the deal can claim victory, but Saudis are arguably the biggest winner,” he contended.
From the Saudi perspective, normalization with Iran — a country that’s long been seen by the Saudi monarchy as one of its greatest security threats — removes obstacles in its reform and economic transformation journey, according to Joseph Westphal, a former U.S. ambassador to the kingdom.
“I think the leadership there believes that this is a very important moment for Saudi Arabia as it emerges … as a real leader in the world on many issues,” Westphal told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Tuesday. “A constant struggle with Iran delays that and impedes the progress that they made.”
“Obviously, the United States could not have made this agreement possible because we don’t have a relationship with Iran,” the ambassador added. “I think China was a good partner to do this. I think they’re the right people,” he said, noting that China invests heavily in Saudi Arabia and is its top trading partner.
“So I think this is a very good thing all the way around.”
Hopes for de-escalation in areas like Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has carried out a brutal war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015, are now more realistic than before, analysts say. Risks to shipping and oil supplies in the region may be reduced, and trade and investment between the countries could add to growth.
Reduced risk of direct military confrontation
At the very least, improved communication will reduce risks of confrontation, said Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, who called the deal “a much needed pressure valve amid heightened regional tensions.”
Still, it’s a mistake to assume that everything is solved.
“Due to the ongoing shadow war between Iran and Israel – and sporadic Iran-backed attacks against shipping and energy infrastructure throughout the region – the risk of escalation due to miscalculation is still uncomfortably high,” he said.
In the past few years, the region has seen numerous attacks, particularly on Saudi and Emirati ships and energy infrastructure, which Riyadh and Washington blamed on Iran. Tehran rejects the accusations.
“Riyadh and Tehran will remain adversaries with competing visions for the region,” Soltvedt stressed. “But improved channels for communication have the potential to reduce the risk of a direct military confrontation between the two states.”
Iran is also now enriching uranium at its highest level ever, and is believed to be just months away from nuclear bomb-making capability. Rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran may mean little if the latter’s nuclear program isn’t addressed.
Has Washington been snubbed?
The White House’s seeming reluctance to praise China was hard not to notice.
“We support any effort to de-escalate tensions in the region. We think it’s in our interests,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said of the news on Friday, adding that the Biden administration had made similar efforts in that direction.
But when asked about Beijing’s role, Kirby replied: “This is not about China and I’m not going to characterize here whatever China’s role is.”
Chinese President, Xi Jinping (L) is welcomed by Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (R) at the Palace of Yamamah in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on December 8, 2022.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The news signaled the growing influence of China in the Arab region. And not just economically, as it already exports an immense amount of goods to the Middle East and is the largest importer of Saudi oil – but politically. Leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made concerted efforts to diversify their foreign relations and move away from being overly dependent on the U.S., as successive American administrations treat the Middle East as less of a priority.
“I think it demonstrates that U.S.’s influence and credibility in that region has diminished and that there is a new sort of international regional alignment taking place, which has empowered and given both Russia and China newfound influence and status,” Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Middle East policy advisor for the State Department, told NBC News.
He called the fact that China brokered the deal “stunning.”
US Marine Corps General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. (C, behind), commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Lieutenant General Fahd bin Turki bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (front), commander of the Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, are shown reportedly Iranian weapons seized by Saudi forces from Yemen’s Huthi rebels, during his visit to a military base in al-Kharj in central Saudi Arabia on July 18, 2019.
Fayez Nureldine | AFP | Getty Images
Still, there seems to be a consensus that in terms of military power and security alliances in the region, U.S. influence is in no danger.
“No Chinese mediation — or any diplomatic involvement — will threaten US primacy in the region. All states, Iran included, know that,” Khalifa University’s Al-Saif said. The U.S.-Saudi Arabia security partnership spans nearly three-quarters of a century, and Saudi Arabia’s military arsenal is overwhelmingly supplied and maintained by the U.S. and American military personnel.
Neither KSA nor Iran will change overnight.
Bader Al-Saif
Assistant professor of history, Khalifa University
In any case, China’s gain doesn’t have to mean a loss for the U.S., many believe.
“This shouldn’t be a zero sum game for the US. It can serve US interests: Iran nuclear deal, Yemen, Lebanon for starters can benefit from the agreement,” Al-Saif said.
“A quick move should follow on these files [because] the agreement may not last long,” he added. “Might as well reap benefits while it lasts.”
Will the deal hold?
It’s yet to be seen whether the agreement between the two Middle Eastern powers – and the mutual goodwill expressed in its wake – will last.
Many regional watchers are skeptical.
“Iran’s opting for engagement here should not be misinterpreted as a de-escalation,” Behnam ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CNBC. “Tehran is capitalizing on deeper Chinese enmeshment in Persian Gulf trade as well as increased Saudi hedging of the pro-American order in the region.”
“There was zero political cost to the Islamic Republic to this agreement, whereas the mere optics and politics of it, let alone the substance, are in Iran’s favor,” he said, stressing his doubt that Iran will stop meddling in regional conflicts and other countries via proxies and militant activity.
Ben Taleblu also argued that Iran’s enmity with Israel played a role in its calculations as “Tehran is trying to show that it beat Jerusalem to Riyadh, and is trying to push back and break out of the diplomatic isolation it felt due to the Abraham Accords” when the UAE and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel.
For al-Saif, there is “certainly hope for the agreement to live on” and lead to the prosperity that people of both countries deserve. “But,” he said, “neither KSA nor Iran will change overnight.”
Environment
The global critical minerals race is heating up — and rare earths stocks are skyrocketing
A wheel loader takes ore to a crusher at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020.
Steve Marcus | Reuters
The emergence of critical minerals as a new arena of geopolitical competition has coincided with a dizzying rally in U.S.-listed rare earths mining stocks.
Despite paring gains in recent weeks, shares of Critical Metals have advanced 241% over the last three months, while NioCorp Developments, Energy Fuels and Idaho Strategic Resources have all surged well above 100% over the same period.
The eye-watering gains are even more remarkable year-to-date. Energy Fuels’ stock price has quadrupled through the first 10 months of the year, while NioCorp Developments’ shares have nearly quintupled.
Rare earths have come to the fore as a key bargaining chip in the ongoing geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies.
Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals, which has one of the world’s largest rare earths deposits in southern Greenland, described the rally of U.S.-listed rare earths miners as evidence of a major market boom.
“I talk of it like this, I mean, there have been four big booms. You had the gold boom in the 19th century, the oil boom in the 20th century, in the early 21st century you had the tech boom — and now you’ve got the rare earths boom,” Sage told CNBC by telephone.
“But the rare earths boom is the future. It will power all of the above.”
We are going from a philosophy of ‘fill the gap’ through imports to ‘mine the gap’ domestically or regionally.
Audun Martinsen
Head of supply chain research at Rystad Energy
Rare earths refer to 17 elements on the periodic table that have an atomic structure that gives them special magnetic properties. These materials are vital components to a vast array of modern technologies, from everyday electronics, such as smartphones, to electric vehicles and military equipment.
China, which has a near-monopoly on rare earths, recently threatened to expand its export controls on the elements to further leverage its dominance of the supply chain. However, following an in-person meeting in South Korea on Thursday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing agreed to delay the Oct. 9 export controls by one year.
U.S.-listed rare earths stocks rallied on the news, although analysts remain skeptical about whether the apparent trade truce can offer long-term relief.
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they hold a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Busan, South Korea, October 30, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
“As in all booms, there were a lot of oil companies that couldn’t find oil and there were a lot of gold companies that couldn’t find gold. And I’m sure there are going to be a lot of rare earths companies that won’t make it either — because when there’s a boom, there’s hype. And when there’s hype, there’s overexuberance in investing,” Critical Metals’ Sage said.
“It’s not a straight rise up. It’s a jagged line, but the trend is in the right direction if you’ve got the right project in the right place, and you’ve got the right partners,” he added.
‘A much bigger and longer supercycle’
Kevin Das, senior technical consultant at New Frontier Minerals, an Australian-based rare earths explorer, agreed with Sage’s description of a rare earths market boom, while acknowledging the likelihood of stock price pullbacks.
“People are saying we’re in an uptrend on what is a bigger supercycle and some of the evidence behind that is there has been low commodity prices for some time, there’s been underinvestment. And now, with the advent of AI … we’re going to see a much bigger and longer supercycle,” Das told CNBC by telephone.
Das drew parallels between the Biden administration’s support of clean energy projects, which coincided with a rally in lithium-related stocks, and the Trump administration’s backing of rare earths.
Shares of Critical Metals over the last three months.
“In the last nine to 10 months that Trump has been in power, he’s talked about annexing Greenland, he’s talked about doing a deal with Ukraine for rare earths and then the real clincher was this equity deal with MP Materials,” Das said.
“So, I think the runway over the next two to three years is going to be very fruitful,” he added.
Not everyone is as bullish on the outlook for rare earths-related stocks, however.
Audun Martinsen, head of supply chain research at Rystad Energy, said the recent surge in equity prices reflected a mix of geopolitical tension, strategic policy support and speculative momentum.
“Rare earths have clearly moved to the center of global industrial strategy, vital for defense, EVs and clean energy, but this looks more like the early stages of a structural shift than a mature ‘fourth boom,'” Martinsen told CNBC by email.
Neodymium is displayed at the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, on Wednesday, May 5, 2010.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“We are going from a philosophy of ‘fill the gap’ through imports to ‘mine the gap’ domestically or regionally,” he continued. “It will be a lengthy, expensive and rocky path forward as adequate, cost-effective resources and element diversity are complex to get full control over.”
Clean energy transition
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University, said there were two clear factors at work as global competition intensifies to secure the supply of critical minerals — one structural and the other political.
“The structural: Despite whatever political attempts there may be to stop or derail things, the clean-energy transition is happening — and it is accelerating — and yes, it depends on a number of critical minerals, whose prices are bound to jump,” Wagner told CNBC by email.
China, for instance, is the low-cost supplier of many of these minerals, Wagner said, noting that the Asian giant’s mineral dominance is by no means an accident.
“Beijing has invested heavily in green industrial policy for years, focusing on the full, integrated supply chain. That’s where politics enters,” Wagner said.
“Some attempts to onshore supply chains are eminently justified for national security and other reasons, and those attempts will increase prices and stocks of U.S. mining companies. Some of what we see, of course, is merely the current politics or erratic trade wars and the like,” he added.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a sidebar survey about how much Electrek readers think it would cost to add EV charging systems to their homes. After receiving over twenty-four hundred responses, here’s what you told us.
In our previous survey, we asked readers why they chose to install solar panels at home. In the recap, many of our commenters mentioned having their systems systems pull double duty — charging home backup batteries and topping off their electric cars. That got us thinking: as more and more first-time EV owners look into the many benefits of home charging, how much do they expect to pay for home charging?
Based on over 2,400 responses, this is what you told us.
What do you expect to pay for home charging?
The most positive surprise was that more than a third of Electrek readers who responded to the poll already had 240V outlets in their garage, so they expected to pay effectively $0 – their homes are EV ready now!
Of the remaining 64%, 44% were fairly evenly split between a relatively straightforward ~$500-1,000 wiring job with a few wiring or panel upgrades while only about 18% expected to spend over $1,000 due to having an older home, a detached garage, or for some other (apparently pricey and/or inconvenient) reason.
Navigating the questions
Just like you would for home solar, we’d recommend getting a quote from several installers before making a decision. One of our trusted partners, Qmerit, offers a quote-sourcing service called PowerHouse. The service scans pricing from thousands of completed electrification installations across North America to provide the best quotes that take regional variability into account and work with homeowners to “bundle” chargers, installation, and even batteries.
America has arrived at an inflection point in which all of the technical, policy and financial elements are in place to support a societal shift toward whole-home electrification. Now what’s needed is a comprehensive way to assemble these complex elements into a simple, financeable, home-energy retrofit that makes it easier to implement.
QMERIT FOUNDER TRACY PRICE
Qmerit says its new bundling program can flag the potential for federal, state, and local utility incentives like the ones we’ve covered from Illinois utility ComEd and others that can reduce or even eliminate the upfront costs of home installations for many.
Original content from Electrek.
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Following a lawsuit brought against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by major heavy truck manufacturers over California’s emissions requirements, CARB has struck back with fresh lawsuit of its own alleging that the manufacturers violated the terms of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership agreement to sell cleaner vehicles.
Daimler Truck North America, International Motors, Paccar and Volvo Group North America sued the California Air Resources Board in federal court this past August, seeking to invalidate the Clean Truck Partnership emissions reduction deal they signed with the state in 2023 to move away from traditional trucks and toward zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). The main point of the lawsuit was that, because the incoming Trump Administration rolled back Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that had previously given individual states the right to set their own environmental and emissions laws, the truck makers shouldn’t have to honor the deals signed with individual states.
“Plaintiffs are caught in the crossfire: California demands that OEMs follow preempted laws; the United States maintains such laws are illegal and orders OEMs to disregard them,” the lawsuit reads. “Accordingly, Plaintiff OEMs file this lawsuit to clarify their legal obligations under federal and state law and to enjoin California from enforcing standards preempted by federal law.”
After several weeks of waiting for a response, we finally have one: CARB is suing the OEMs right back, claiming that the initial suit proves the signing manufacturers, “(have) unambiguously stated that they do not intend to comply.”
They want to sell Americans more diesel
In its lawsuit, CARB argues that monetary damages alone would not make the people of the State of California whole as far as damages are concerned, citing that the stated goal of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership was, “to achieve emissions reductions that cannot be measured strictly in financial terms,” according to ACT-News.
The agency is asking the court to compel the truck companies to perform on their 2023 obligations or, failing that, to allow CARB to rescind the contract and recover its costs. A hearing on the truck makers’ request for a preliminary injunction was held Friday, with another court date set for November 21, when CARB will seek to dismiss the case brought forth by the truck brands. The outcome of these cases could shape how state and federal government agencies cooperation on emissions rules in the future.
You can read the full 22-page lawsuit, below, then let us know what you think of CARB’s response (and their chances of succeeding) in the comments.
SOURCES: CARB; via ACT-News, Trucking Dive.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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