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DC’s Think Tanks Mobilize for Rapid Response to the China- Brokered Iran-Saudi Arabia Pact

Ali Shamkhani, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, right, shakes hands Friday with Wang Yi, China's top foreign policy official, during a meeting with Saudi Arabia's National Security adviser and Minister of State Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban in Beijing. NOURNEWS AGENCY / AFP

Given that China and the Mideast are two of the three primary obsessions among U.S.-based national security think tanks (Russia being the third, of course), it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that analysts reacted very fast with their assessment of Friday’s rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Atlantic Council was the first to respond (and the most prolific), publishing insights from 14 different analysts within 24 hours of the deal’s announcement. But over the course of the weekend, the debate shifted to Twitter, where it became almost impossible to keep up with the pace of commentary from scholars and analysts in the U.S. and around the world.

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