MIDDLE EASTERN rulers are livid with President Donald Trump, who together with Israel unleashed a war on Iran without a serious plan for ending it. They are disappointed by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has failed to twist arms and bang heads in the cause of peace, though his country enjoys unique economic leverage over every party to the conflict.
There is a cynical explanation for China’s reluctance to take risks for peace. Why would they want to save their most dangerous rival? The first months of the Iran war saw China pull off another big win. The world realised it owed China a debt of gratitude for greatly reducing its oil imports after the Strait of Hormuz closed, stabilising global energy markets. Possibly it was China’s intention to keep oil prices low. The country’s economy is slowing at home, leaving its growth so dependent on exports that a collapse in overseas demand would hurt. Perhaps China was reaping the rewards of having built up vast oil reserves, allowing it to meet as much as half of its domestic demand by drawing on existing stocks. By reducing imports, China could uphold its policy of avoiding excessive reliance on any single supplier, even including close geopolitical partners such as Russia. Those reserves reduced the sting, too, of the Trump administration’s efforts to stop Iran selling oil to China, by far the largest buyer of its crude. That undercut claims by Trump apologists that his disastrous war with Iran was in fact the opening move of a grandmaster-level chess game to contain China. More painfully still for China hawks in Washington, Mr Trump shows no sign of wishing to challenge China’s ties to Iran’s war machine. The president is eager for a successful meeting with Mr Xi in Washington on September 24th. He recently played down reports that Chinese satellite images may have helped Iran attack American air bases in Jordan, testily telling journalists that America does similarly disobliging things to China.
Its Communist Party leaders relish the spectacle of America floundering in a Middle Eastern quagmire, according to that world-weary take.
