The Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO with headquarter in Beijing was founded in 2001 as successor of the Shanghai Five group from 1996. The SCO stepwise expanded by new member states and in 2022/23, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt got the status of dialogue partners; United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait may follow soon. The SCO is an inter-governmental organization based on the principle of non-interference in sovereign states’ internal affairs formulated as ‚Shanghai Spirit’. The SCO has an institutional structure with a Secretariat, a Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS, Tashkent), regular meetings, multi-national military exercises (Peace Mission) and it supports economic cooperation between member states. The SCO is an alternative global governance model to the alliance model of the West (NATO, EU, Quad) and covers now most of the Eurasian landmass and approximately 40% of the world population, but it is not a military alliance and does not aim to integrate the member states into supranational frameworks. The initial focus on security later shifted to economic issues and now also to energy policy. As various member states have their own geopolitical agenda (e.g., China, Russia, India, Iran and so on), Western analysts sometimes doubt the relevance of the SCO, but it allows its member states a diversification and balancing of their security-related, economic, and diplomatic activities, by this getting more political freedom of action. The SCO activities are well aligned with Chinas ‘circle of friends’ and partnership concept of foreign policy and many SCO states have a bilateral partnership with China, e.g., Saudi-Arabia and Iran. Based on this, the co-incidence of the SCO expansion and the trilateral agreement from 2023 between China, Saudi-Arabia, and Iran to restore the Saudi-Iranian relations is not surprising. The United Arab Emirates also have good relations to China and are now restoring their relation to Iran as well. In summary, the current SCO expansion is a further step to a multipolar world order and is challenging the security architecture of the United States for the MENA region.