Prior to the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas in southern Israel, China had positioned itself as a new power broker in the Middle East. Chinese officials were brimming with confidence after they finalized a détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, hinting they could do the same in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But in the wake of a full-scale war that's now underway, those same Chinese officials are much more circumspect.

In this week's episode, CGSP Middle East Editor Jony Essa and Eric speak with three of the world's leading China-Mideast scholars to discuss China's response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

First, Gedaliah Afterman, head of the Asia Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, and Jonathan Fulton, associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, discuss how the war has impacted China's foreign policy towards Israel and Persian Gulf countries.

Then, Bill Figueroa, one of the world's foremost experts on China-Iran relations at the University of Groningen, joins the conversation to talk about whether Beijing can leverage its influence with Iran to sway Hamas.

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