아세안

Last week, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, made his first trip to China and signed a strategic partnership with President Xi Jinping. The week prior, Saied made headlines for becoming the first Tunisian president to visit Iran since the Islamic Revolution. And before that, rumors swirled about Russian planes landing in Djerba. It is too early to tell whether any of these events mark a major, strategic realignment of Tunisia away from its traditional allies in the West. More likely, Saied is playing global and regional powers against one other to secure the best deal, an art form perfected by other leaders in the region. But Saied has made one major shift to Tunisia’s foreign policy that in turn might help explain his recent outreach to Iran, China, and Russia. Over the past year, Saied has overseen a sea change in Tunisia’s position on the two-state solution for Israelis and the Palestinians. While Tunisia had historically been an outlier in the region for being one of the first to accept a two-state solution, today it is increasingly becoming an outlier for rejecting it. While popular at home, this shift has strained Tunisia’s relations with both the West and the Arab Gulf states. It is in this context of greater isolation internationally that Saied now dangles the threat of relations with Iran, China, and Russia.