Pick a side
(there are no good ones)
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A thesis is circulating. It’s 8,000 words long, which - in the world of geopolitical essays - means it must be true. The argument as far as I understood goes like this: the Iran war was never about Iran. It was a surgical strike against China. The US holds all the cards. China is collapsing. The dollar is irreplaceable. The Gulf has realigned. NATO’s refusal to help is actually leverage. Europe will comply. Everything is going according to plan.
I’ve spent the past month covering this war in real time.
I have some notes.
The centrepiece claim is that Operation Epic Fury “eliminated” Iran as a Chinese proxy. In a single 72-hour window. Overnight. Decapitated in an afternoon.
The thesis uses the past tense throughout, the way you’d describe a completed renovation.
[I am/was writing this on day thirty of the renovation.]
Iran hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan today. The world’s largest LNG export facility. “Extensive damage,” said QatarEnergy, with the understated calm of someone whose house is on fire. The IRGC then published a list of Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati energy facilities it intends to strike next. With addresses. Like a restaurant menu, except everything is flammable.
If you’ve been reading my war diary, you know the daily score. Iran’s launch capability is increasing - Israeli Channel 14 admitted that on day eight, which must have been a fun editorial meeting. The continuous strikes doctrine is active. The war costs ~$1.43 billion per day. Of which Congress has authorised exactly zero. And Trump’s own counterterror official resigned today saying the war was started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Grand strategy against China. Obviously.
The thesis then explains that China’s “silence” proves it’s overextended. No military response. No escalation. Just press conferences. Beijing offered “nothing but press conferences, emergency summits that were not convened, and military repositioning that was absent”.
Let me check my notes on what China actually did.
BeiDou satellite guidance for Iranian missiles. Chinese reconnaissance satellites feeding real-time targeting data. The Liaowang-1 intelligence vessel parked off Oman sharing every US and Israeli naval movement with Tehran. Seventy-seven ships transiting Hormuz in yuan. Diesel and gasoline exports halted. Rare earth exports banned. Yttrium - which goes into every radar the US manufactures - up 140 times in price.
Some silence.
China is doing what any competent strategist does when their opponent is punching himself in the face. Standing back. Watching. Occasionally handing him a heavier glove.
The petrodollar is being replaced at the point of sale. Allies are negotiating with the enemy independently. The radar network is destroyed and the materials to rebuild it come from the country that was supposedly cornered by the operation. Every week this war continues, it compounds the damage to the aggressor more than the target.
Why would China interrupt that? If your opponent is drowning, you don’t throw him a rope. You throw him an anchor and call it humanitarian aid.