Friday’s headline news was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank following a run on its depositors.
The collapse was the second-largest bank failure in the country’s history, and fears of a domino effect rocked stock markets.
Nevertheless, looking back, it was probably not the most vital event of the day.
It’s an honor to announce that Saudi Arabia and Iran have restored diplomatic relations.
Given their long proxy war in Yemen and fierce sectarian hatred, the sudden agreement (right) was staggering.
Especially because it was mediated by China.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal in a headline that conveys the implications: “The agreement marks a diplomatic victory for Beijing in a region where the US has long dominated geopolitics.”
Even The Latest York Times, often a spokesman for the Biden administration, repeated the gloomy assessmentsaying that China’s role showed “President Xi Jinping’s ambition to supply a substitute for the US-led world order.”
![President Joe Biden](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008069186.jpg?w=1024)
Let it’s remembered – a latest world order during which China is the leader.
And it’s happening before our eyes.
Even when it were an isolated incident, China’s ability to unite the warring parties would show its growing influence.
But this power move, removed from being unique, was one other example of China taking giant steps towards its goal of world domination.
To cite a number of examples, it helps Russia in Ukraine, suppressing freedom in Hong Kong, threatening to invade Taiwan, and now outflanking the United States in the Middle East.
Its tentacles reach Africa and Latin and South America.
The pattern emphasizes that the spy balloon that China overtly hovered over America’s heartland was neither random nor accidental.
It was a message.
Someone should get up Joe Biden and tell him that our country is fast becoming the #2 superpower in the world for his time.
Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, sees the Iran-Saudi deal as a loss for America on three fronts.
He told the Day by day: “It shows that the Saudis don’t trust Washington to support them, that Iran sees a chance to detach American allies to finish its international isolation, and that China is becoming the majordomo of superpower politics in the Middle East.”
![President Xi Jinping](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008069188.jpg?w=1024)
In actual fact, most of the West was surprised by the speed of China’s aggressive actions.
The 2019 assessment of the European Council on Foreign Relations concluded with satisfaction that “China still has a limited appetite to challenge the US-led security architecture in the Middle East or to play a big role in regional policy.”
Yet Europe’s lack of expertise underscores that American leadership is crucial and its absence may very well be disastrous.
For China, the Iran-Saudi deal reflects President Xi’s chess approach to the modern Big Game and cements China’s oil and gas sources, which already source 40% of its oil from the Gulf region.
Given China’s massive energy purchases from Russia, the Communist regime has now secured relations with the world’s three largest producers of coal, oil and natural gas.
The deal also helps to reintegrate Iran into a part of the global trading system and further weakens the leaky economic sanctions imposed by the US and Europe.
As such, it’ll help save a regime shaken by internal protests, mainly over women’s rights, and strengthen its agenda in the region – all while expanding China’s list of allies.
In Israel, meanwhile, the deal threatens efforts to unify the Arab states of the Persian Gulf against Iran, which continues to hunt to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
![Soldier's](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008069189.jpg?w=1024)
The pact immediately began blaming, with an unidentified member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pointing to each the Biden White House and the previous Israeli government, in accordance with The Times of Israel.
He quotes the source as saying “There was a way of weakness in America and Israel, so Saudi Arabia turned to other channels.”
Following the Saudi-Iran Pact
The official claimed that the Saudi-Iranian talks began in 2021 during the short tenure of Israel’s unity government and when Biden tried to coax Iran right into a latest nuclear deal.
Recall, too, that Biden took office, he said during the campaign, determined to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” because he believed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
It was during those days, an Israeli official said, that the Saudis turned to China for help.
An enormous a part of Biden’s misinterpretation of the region was his blind determination to undo the whole lot Donald Trump had done. Biden has never accepted the Trump-era Abraham Accords, which with the right diplomacy could possibly be prolonged to Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations, including in Africa.
Furthermore, just as Biden is stuck in space-time with Iran, he has failed to know that the majority Arab states are frustrated by Palestinian rejection in relation to an answer with Israel. In one other backward turn, he tried to revive the failed two-state solution based on the principle of “land for peace” and insisted that peace between Arabs and Jews was not possible without it.
As Robert Gates famously identified, being mistaken is nothing latest to Biden, who shows no ability to learn from mistakes or history.
![Jamal Khashoggi](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008069183.jpg?w=1024)
After all, in relation to the president’s repeated fondness for China, his role as the “big guy” in his family’s lucrative influence-trading schemes can’t be ignored.
As I noted, Xi Jinping knows the whole lot the Bidens did and how much money they got from China in what former family partner Tony Bobulinski said was an intelligence operation targeting Joe Biden.
Then take a look at the facts this manner. If the president is really innocent and has not been compromised, why is he so passive as China usurps America’s role on the world stage?
Just no claws on this Kat
By law, the governor is the strongest person in Albany.
Unless the governor is Kathy Hochul.
She recently got one other rude reminder that legislative leaders rule the roost.
After Hochul called for a change in the law requiring judges to order “the least restrictive terms” for criminal defendants, a lone Democratic member, State Senator Jeremy Cooney of Rochester, signaled his support for the “surgical” change.
Hochul called him “courageous”, but inside hours Cooney retracted, calling just for “proceed discussion” on the matter.
![Katie Hochul](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/charter-1-1.jpg?w=1024)
He kept quiet about his visit to the woodshed, but Cooney’s flip-flops scream to the skies about Hochul’s weakness.
No one is afraid of her.
Crime pays in “Cuse”.
Crazy, crazy all over the place.
From Syracuse.com: “A latest program to scale back gun violence in the city desires to pay gang members to remain out of trouble.”
“Community Violence Prevention Policy, a pilot program proposed by Mayor Ben Walsh’s office to scale back gun violence, pays between $100 and $200 per week to gang members who comply with participate.
“The payments are intended to assist gang members with basic expenses, but they only get the money in the event that they avoid violent criminal behavior.”