When the U.S. Plays with Fire, China Watches

In early 2026, less than a week after the Chinese New Year holidays ended, the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran. This was not a sudden event. Judging from the military preparations, the United States had recently concentrated a large amount of military assets in the relevant region. From the perspective of sunk costs, a “quiet withdrawal” had become highly unlikely, making some form of action almost inevitable.

However, compared with the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War, the scale of these military assets was still too small. In terms of total troop strength, level of war preparation, as well as logistics and ammunition reserves, they were far from sufficient to sustain a large-scale and prolonged air–sea campaign.

More importantly, today’s Iran is not the Iraq of the past. Iran possesses advantages in military capability, strategic depth, missile technology, and the geographic convenience of potentially blocking the strait. Although there are domestic political dissenters, Iran does not face the kind of fundamental instability that Iraq once had, where a Sunni minority ruled over a Shiite majority.

Therefore, this conflict is unlikely to bring about any fundamental change. Instead, it to some extent exposes the growing difficulty the United States faces in bearing the costs of global military deployment and strategic power projection. And compared with 2003, the United States has undergone more than twenty additional years of deindustrialization. The military consequences of this trend are gradually becoming visible, such as insufficient ammunition production capacity and the difficulty of expanding defense industrial output. For all countries that regard the United States as a potential military opponent, these trends can be seen as strategically favorable signals.

Nevertheless, war itself does not serve China’s interests. China’s long-term objective is to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, turning the region into a prosperous market and cooperative partner. This approach differs from the Middle East strategies historically pursued by Britain, France, and the United States. Colonial powers traditionally relied on a divide-and-rule approach, creating turmoil and confrontation in order to gain room for further manipulation and profit. China, by contrast, hopes to unlock the enormous economic potential of connectivity through infrastructure development and friendly relations between states.

Over the long run, deeper cooperation and shared economic interests between China and Middle Eastern countries may gradually reduce the excessive U.S. presence in the region that are no longer reasonable. As a global power, it is natural for the United States to have certain interests and a degree of presence in the Middle East. China has never sought to completely exclude the United States from any region. The issue, however, is that the United States maintains its presence in the Middle East primarily to preserve hegemony rather than to defend narrowly defined “national interests”. The United States is geographically distant from the Middle East and has already become a major oil producer itself, no longer worrying about oil supply as it once did. At the same time, it faces serious economic, political, and social problems at home. Under such circumstances, its continued presence in the Middle East increasingly appears as a sign of being trapped by the burdens of hegemony.

Yet the struggle against hegemony has never been something that can be accomplished overnight. It cannot be decided by a small-scale conflict such as this, nor will it reach a final conclusion in 2026. For China, one important bottom line is maintaining the stability of the Iranian state. Judging from the current situation, the possibility of the Iranian regime collapsing is extremely small; it is largely a wishful expectation on the part of the United States and Israel. Therefore, at the present stage, China – as in the past – will not intervene in the conflict in any way except a diplomatic one. Maintaining economic exchanges with Iran, offering political support, and promoting peace and dialogue remain the basic strategy.

The U.S. military decision in this episode has also exposed clear problems. Its overall strategic objectives appear unclear, and the decision-making process seems confused. Although the United States still possesses formidable military strength on paper, it has shown a lack of maturity in strategic planning and execution. In a certain sense, this is not a “qualified opponent.”

The United States may originally have hoped to cripple Iran quickly through a surprise strike before a meeting between the Chinese and American leaders, thereby gaining a strategic advantage. That idea has clearly failed. China’s diversification of oil imports was itself a precaution taken in anticipation of disruptions involving countries such as Venezuela and Iran.

At the same time, however, the United States still strongly hopes that high-level meetings between China and the United States will proceed as scheduled rather than be canceled. Under these circumstances, the United States has effectively fallen into a strategic dilemma.

China, in order to maintain overall stability in Sino-American relations, has shown a certain degree of goodwill. Yet this goodwill also creates a moral risk for China when facing its friends in the Middle East. Iran is a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the SCO engages in security cooperation- primarily in areas such as counter-terrorism – it is not a traditional military alliance and carries no mutual-defense obligations like those of NATO. Even so, a scheduled meeting between China and the US would still inevitably appear somewhat awkward.

Given the high expectations that some Middle Eastern friends place on China, a certain degree of “disappointment” may be unavoidable for quite some time. After all, China’s primary military preparations still center on two far more important tasks: ensuring the capability to liberate Taiwan island even if the United States intervenes, and ensuring credible nuclear deterrence against the United States so as not to fall behind in nuclear competition.

What about the future?

From the perspective of military technology, modern air-defense systems and the contest for air superiority have become extremely complex, far beyond Iran’s current missile technologies. If Iran hopes to establish a complete modern air-defense network, it will find it difficult to achieve this entirely through independent development and will have to rely on technological support from countries such as Russia or China.

Yet a truly comprehensive system cannot be built simply by acquiring a few advanced pieces of equipment. It requires massive, long-term, and comprehensive investment. Otherwise, the defensive network will inevitably contain gaps, which could still be exploited by opponents of the level of the United States or Israel. For this reason, China will inevitably remain highly cautious regarding military assistance, avoiding investments that would prove ineffective.

At the same time, Iran as an ancient civilization with a distinctive historical tradition, is unlikely to rely entirely on other countries to construct its security system. The extent of cooperation will also depend greatly or even decisively on Iran’s own preferences.

One question worth considering is whether China might in the future deploy a carrier strike group to the Middle East. For example, if a Chinese carrier group were to enter the Persian Gulf while maintaining an officially neutral stance, yet in practice provide a certain degree of airspace information to Iran, such a presence might offer some assistance to the latter. Of course, the United States and Israel would very likely detect such “pseudo-neutrality,” but precisely that awareness could help restrain their strategic impulses.

Nevertheless, actions of this kind would require consideration of many complex factors. For example, whether they might affect China-India relations. Although China and India have had border tensions, China generally prefers not to provoke India excessively and instead seeks stability in its neighborhood. But the long-term presence of a Chinese carrier group in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf would almost certainly make India extremely uneasy, perhaps even fearful and angry.

In countries operating under Western-style electoral systems, political leaders must often respond to public sentiment, and policies can sometimes appear changeable or unstable. Whether the presence of Chinese carrier groups might provoke an excessive reaction from India is exactly the kind of consideration that would enter China’s strategic calculations.

In such an international environment, China sometimes arguably appears like “the only adult in the room.” The analogy may be controversial, but in its diplomatic decision-making, China often weighs a broader range of long-term and complex factors.

Therefore, even in the future when China’s national strength and military power are greater and the United States has declined further, China may still employ military force with extreme caution, which may continue to “disappoint” many observers.

From a geographic perspective, Iran is not as distant as Venezuela. If China truly needed to project power there, it could do so with considerable effectiveness from a technical standpoint. But at present and likely for some time to come, there is no need to employ that capability.

Perhaps when the decline of the United States reaches a certain stage, after passing through its initial period of strategic anxiety or “Stress reaction phase”, it may come to appreciate the prudence in China’s caution with greater maturity, allowing the two sides to achieve a peaceful strategic rebalancing eventually, including in the Middle East.