China Is Now Goading Iran Into Attacking Israel

Commentary

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Aug. 11 told Iran’s acting foreign minister that Beijing supports the Islamic Republic defending its “sovereignty, security, and national dignity.” Wang said that killing Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist group’s political leader, in Tehran violated Iran’s sovereignty and threatened regional stability.

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to 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 war without the direct and indirect support of the Chinese state.

First, there is Beijing’s direct economic lifeline to the ailing Iranian economy. Last year, when Iran’s crude oil exports reached a five-year high, China took about 90 percent of the volume, according to Kpler, a European research firm. It appears that strong Chinese demand was the reason for the increase in Iranian production.

Beijing also provided diplomatic cover for the assault on Israel. Propaganda support may have been even more important: Some 96.5 percent of the videos on Hamas carried on the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok support the terrorist group. China’s Communist Party uses that platform to amplify favored narratives.

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 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 countered with two landmark deals of its own, one in March of last year between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the other on July 23, when Beijing got 14 Palestinian factions, including arch rivals Hamas and Fatah, to sign the Beijing Declaration, a unity pact, in the Chinese capital.

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.

Clearly, the Chinese need to do something. Hamas, which had won favor in Beijing, is in disarray. The group was able to appoint a successor to Haniyeh faster than many suspected, but it is losing control of Gaza, as Amir Bohbot of the Jerusalem Post reported on Aug. 11. Israel’s military successes, among other factors, have considerably weakened the organization.

Moreover, the United States is rushing military assets to bolster its already considerable forces in the region. On the Aug. 11, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered Carrier Strike Group 3 to expedite its transit to the Middle East. He also dispatched the USS Georgia, an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine, to make its way there. China cannot match American firepower in the region, and neither can its friend, Russia.

Ultimately, it is still the United States that wields power in the Middle East. Yes, at one point, it looked as if America was withdrawing. After all, the United States, as it became the new Saudi Arabia, needed the region less. America has now pumped more crude oil than any other nation in history, for six years in a row. The United States produces more natural gas than any other nation. China tried to fill what it perceived to be a vacuum.

Yet just because 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 due in large part to the stunning killing of Haniyeh.

China apparently thought it was being clever in disrupting the Middle East with proxy war. When proxies falter, however, so do their masters. China is now faltering.

So China is now gambling. At the moment, China’s newest gamble is emboldening Tehran: Iran’s foreign ministry repeated Wang Yi’s words on Aug. 13 when the regime rejected calls from Britain, France, Germany, and Italy not to hit Israel.

China’s 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 the 11th to Tehran made a bold chaos move.

China, from all indications, wants more war in the world’s most war-torn region.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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