Few developments are as positive for the Middle East and the Global South than the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to reestablish diplomatic relations. And better still is that the Chinese, after long discussions between the two countries with Chinese help, brokered the deal.

China has demonstrated what thoughtful efforts can accomplish, and it marks the demolition of the longstanding U.S. efforts to initiate and maintain divisions between major, predominantly Muslim countries, in this case the most important Muslim countries by far, one which happens to be primarily Shi’a and the other Sunni confessionally. What did lame and arguably demented Biden have to say when questioned about the fresh accord? He did not even mention the accord but made some silly comment about how good relations between some Arab countries and Apartheid Zionist Israel is a good thing! You have to bet that that he was taken aback by the agreement to open embassies between the Saudis and Iran sometime this Spring, for any enmity at all between Iran and Saudi Arabia has long been the keystone allowing the U.S. to lord it over Iran and to maintain threats and some dominance over the Muslim world.

One has to go all the way back to the early 1970s when the U.S., having spent many billions of dollars on the failed Vietnam War, realized it could no longer maintain any kind of monetary gold standard. The U.S. had an estimate 20,000 plus tons of gold socked away in New York and Fort Knox in Kentucky after World War 2 and for over two decades had more gold by far than any other country, and much of that had been stolen. But by the 1970s it was estimated that this mother lode of gold had been diminished by at least 12,000 tons, and real leaders like France’s Charles DeGaulle especially had been demanding gold in payment for U.S. debts and a balance of trade issues. This was when the U.S. proposed to the Saudis that they sell their precious oil resources and other valuable, critical natural resources produced by other countries for dollars only and the entire world of oil exporters fell in line to collect PAPER. The quid pro quo? The U.S. said it would “protect” the Saudis militarily in exchange for its oil resources. Thus the world essentially shifted from a monetary gold standard to a U.S. financial paper standard.

No country had ever been so lucky as the U.S. to pull this shift off until quite recently. Not only could the U.S. buy real stuff with paper promises conjured as has been said literally out of thin air, but there was also the implied military threat that if countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran and many others did not comply with the U.S. demands to sell real valuables for almost nothing, they would be attacked. The weaponization of the dollar and the theft of reserve assets by the U.S. has been the coming disaster…for the U.S., where trust in the U.S. has all but evaporated.

One only has to look, for examples, at what happened to Saddam Hussein when he was threatening to sell Iraqi resources for Euros or some other fiat currency or maybe even gold. And there is the case of prosperous Libya under Qaddafi, too. Libya was targeted for destruction by the U.S. and its NATO allies in part because Qaddafi was alleged to be contemplating the creation of a Gold Dinar and spreading it across Africa as some sort of pan-African unit of exchange to settle trade accounts and more. And one must remember that IF a person happened to be a Libyan citizen, he or she lived in a society that under its government dispensed benefits to citizens like few others has ever done.

But what’s happening now is that while the U.S. dollar has reigned KING as the world’s reserve currency for decades and still is dominant to a lesser extent, it is losing what has been termed its “exorbitant privilege”. The U.S. is going bankrupt by degrees, the dollar is becoming less and less an international monetary factor, and what has underpinned the U.S. empire (of chaos) is becoming increasingly irrelevant worldwide. Military threats by the U.S. and its “allies” like Israel become lesser real threats by the week.

In some respects what has been happening is tragic at least to average Americans, however much U.S. decline has become welcome by a majority of the world’s population. The U.S. never had to become as it has been especially in his century so far. It could, for one thing, have been a benevolent behemoth but beginning with the Vietnam debacle in the 1960s and ever since the U.S. has accomplished very little but wildly sow discord in its efforts to divide and conquer and even steal resources from other countries that balked at U.S. foreign policies, warmongering and militancy. The U.S. has worked hard to divide the Muslim world, for one thing, and especially divide Iran and Saudi Arabia. And the Muslim world is one hugely important bloc of faith and achievements that can and will primarily prosper with a strong concept of unity of faith and cooperation despite any particular differences between Sunnis and Shi’as and lesser iterations or organizations of the what is at bottom deep respect for what the Prophet Muhammad achieved in the seventh century in an Arabia then divided by warring tribes.

The very idea of a super" tribe" of Muslims, as the Prophet seemed to envision at the beginning, is a joyous concept like few others, because in history few civilizations have ever been so culturally and even at times politically brilliant, and also so generous and creative with its gifts to humanity over the long haul of some 14 centuries. What, for example, has American “civilization” (if one can use that term) ever offered humanity except its Constitution and Bill of Rights as a noble model of governance that has often been paid lip service and but not always profound, sure and steady enactment? The United States has been involved in some sort of war, whether internal or external for over 85 percent of the country’s existence.

The major point here is that the U.S has all but lost its mind in the past 50 years in its overweening, arrogant and destructive efforts merely to dominate quite selfishly as the world’s military hegemon, eschewing what China is demonstrating by stressing cooperation and expanded trade among nations and shared efforts to create a better, more peaceful planet.

Neither China nor Russia nor Iran has been running amok like the U.S., but solely trying to defend themselves from various predominantly Western attackers who are literally jealous of achievements which were bound to occur and blossom in recent decades. The U.S. economy’s ills, which have been ascending for 30 years, cannot for example be blamed on China and Russia. Greedy Western corporations gave away much of its industry to China and Southeast Asia trying to capitalize on cheaper labor, wrecking what used to be a thriving and productive middle class in the U.S.

But still, the very best news of late is China’s success in trying to eliminate the divisions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and getting them to ramp up diplomacy and mutual understanding. Yemen stands to benefit, too, for the conflict there has served no one but the U.S.