Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

China Is Now Goading Iran Into Attacking Israel

As countries around the world pressure Iran to not strike Israel—Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31—China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.
Why would the Chinese foreign minister do that? Perhaps because Beijing believes that its proxy, Iran, is losing a war and has to act fast.
Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran’s regime believes that it is no one’s proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.
Whether Iran is China’s claw or not, Tehran could not have launched the Oct. 7, 2023, war without the direct and indirect support of the Chinese state.
There is another telltale sign.
“The proof of Iran’s status as a Beijing proxy is the continual flow of both Chinese weapons to Iran and Chinese components for Iran’s own arms,” Jonathan Bass of InfraGlobal Partners told me this month. “Everybody in the region knows this.”
Bass, who since Oct. 7, 2023, has spoken to senior leaders of Arab League states and four of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said the region is now especially concerned about the flood of Chinese weapons into the hands of Iran and its terrorist proxies. Regional leaders should be: All three of Iran’s main proxy groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—fight with Chinese arms.
Why is China now promoting war in the Middle East? Beijing’s approach to the region has fast evolved in the past half-decade. Not long ago, Chinese policymakers had traditionally tried to maintain a balancing act by developing relationships with all sides and steering clear of the region’s multiple conflicts.
Beijing, as a result, gained influence but was little more than a bystander as the United States dealt with the tough issues. Chinese diplomats, therefore, were on the sidelines as the Trump administration reshaped the region with the four Abraham Accords, pacts with two Gulf states, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and two in nearby North Africa, Sudan and Morocco. The result, peace with Israel, was historic.
China, until the killing of Haniyeh, seemingly was driving events in the Middle East, but it now looks as if Beijing’s green light for an Iranian attack on Israel is an attempt to stop an unfavorable trend.
Yet just the fact that America doesn’t need the region does not make China powerful there. China’s successes, its two big pacts, have proved to be somewhat imaginary. There has been, for example, little follow-up on the Saudi–Iranian agreement, one reason the Biden administration may be making progress on its own deal with Riyadh. Furthermore, the Beijing Declaration has already cratered in record time, in large part because of the stunning killing of Haniyeh.
China apparently thought it was being clever in disrupting the Middle East with a proxy war. When proxies falter, however, so do their masters. China is now faltering.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, apparently adopting the views of Mao Zedong, has been promoting “chaos” to pave the way for worldwide Chinese rule. Wang Yi, in his call on Aug. 11 to Tehran, made a bold chaos move.
China, from all indications, wants more war in the world’s most war-torn region.

en_USEnglish