Peloni: This is an important article. As the US-Israeli campaign against Iran has exposed its terrorist regime as a paper tiger, Iran’s handlers in China were exposed as having limited control over the radicals within its regional proxy. The result of this limited control came in the form of China’s inability to protect the regional Sunni nations from Iranian attacks, despite the fact that these Arab nations had previously moved closer to China as a hedge against their relationship with the US. This failure has come to expose China as something of a paper superpower unable to even control its dominance over its Iranian ally. Consequently, China’s failure in this moment has seen significant diplomatic shifts towards the real super power in the world, the United States, with very recently significant agreements from Indonesia and the Philippines with the US, moving them into America’s camp in the Great Game being played between China and the US. Recall the import of Indonesia vis a vis the Straits of Malacca which control the transit of maritime traffic approaching China, and the clarity of a US security coup becomes quite clear. These geopolitical shifts will act as the wind at Trump’s back as he is soon to meet Pres. Xi in just a couple of weeks as Xi’s remaining Middle East ally of Iran is facing economic and potentially regime collapse.
Zineb Riboua | Apr 21, 2026
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping addresses Chinese and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Oct 23, 2022. Photo by Chinese News Agency, CC BY 3.0, Wikipedia
On Monday, China’s Xi Jinping let the mask slip.
After weeks remaining largely absent from the diplomatic picture as the US conducted Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Xi called Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman to publicly urge a peaceful reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The pressure on Beijing is showing.
At least five Iranian-linked tankers heading from the Gulf of Oman to Malaysia have changed course after the US Navy warned that ships carrying Iranian oil would be intercepted anywhere in the world.
And now, every concession the IRGC withholds costs it more than the one before.
Operation Epic Fury destroyed the military capacity Iran has used to threaten to close the strait, and dismantled the architecture the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps built to survive the decapitation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
What remains is a rump regime without the arsenal, command or finances that lent its threats weight.
President Trump should read this as the strongest card he holds against Beijing.
Xi spent a decade cultivating the Islamic Republic as the armed underwriter of Chinese influence in the Middle East.
Its erosion in this campaign hands Washington immense leverage.
Three fronts establish the stakes.
The first is military.
The US campaign dismantled the arsenal that Chinese industrial networks spent years building.
China had emerged as the principal external supplier of Iran’s ballistic missile program, providing chemical precursors for solid rocket fuel as well as satellite intel and navigation systems.
Indeed, the Treasury Department sanctioned several Chinese entities for supplying the Revolutionary Guard with chemicals used in missile fuel production, and US intelligence documented Iranian cargo ships unloading sodium perchlorate at Bandar Abbas in quantities sufficient to fuel approximately 800 new missiles.
Beijing was also negotiating the sale of CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles designed to sink aircraft carriers.
In December, US special forces raided a merchant vessel in the Indian Ocean carrying Chinese cargo bound for the Revolutionary Guard.
The second front is financial.
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