It’s become practically normalized these days that ignorant influencers and populist politicians abroad will regularly proclaim that Israel dragged America into the war with Iran; that the Islamic Republic didn’t pose any “imminent threat” to the US; that the war is illegal.
These armchair analysts claim that US President Donald Trump has no idea what he’s doing – it’s all to cement his reputation as an international bully – and that the war will bring nothing but higher gas prices and soaring inflation to the US, all to support another country, Israel, which is pulling the strings.
What these pundits fail to realize is that there are actually two chessboards in play. It’s easy to see just the smaller one – the one where Israel had been threatening to go after Iran’s missiles and launchers – and conclude that the US had no choice but to join the fight, since US assets in the region were going to get hit, anyway.
But there’s a bigger chessboard here, and it involves China and the future of global hegemony. It’s where “the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out,” writes Haviv Rettig Gur, who opened my eyes to the two playing spaces, in The Free Press. It’s about “whether the American-led global order survives or whether China displaces it. Every significant American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars... is ultimately a move on this board.” It’s undoubtedly top of mind for Pentagon war planners and most likely for Trump himself.
The war, from this perspective, is not really about Iran. Rather, Iran is the “most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.” China’s control of Iran gives the Asian giant power over vital shipping lanes, with potentially only oil intended for China making it safely and consistently through the Strait of Hormuz.
Gur himself only internalized the China connection during an hour-long conversation he had with China expert Melissa Chen, managing director at Strategy Risks, on his podcast Ask Haviv Anything. Gur, who started his journalism career in 2005 at The Jerusalem Post, then summarized that conversation in a second, 30-minute podcast, which he subsequently wrote into the article that appeared in digital newsletter The Free Press.
Dozens of publications, from The Wall Street Journal to Foreign Policy, have since followed his lead to highlight the China-Iran connection.
The idea in a nutshell: Due to sanctions, Iran turned to China as its economic lifeline. Iran today sells 90% of its oil to China, often through clandestine means – with, as the BBC reports, barrels of oil allegedly relabeled as “Malaysian” to disguise their origin. The oil revenue covers around one-quarter of Iran’s total budget, much of it allocated for military purposes.
In return, China provides the technology that runs Iran’s Internet and communications systems. Iran switched from the GPS used in most of the world to China’s BeiDou system. Rights groups have alleged that Iran’s brutal crackdowns against protesters have been fueled by Chinese facial recognition and surveillance tech, the BBC notes.
China was also reportedly in the process of supplying to Iran sophisticated anti-ship cruise missiles, capable of speeds exceeding Mach 3, engineered to evade the defense systems deployed on American carriers.
'Iran has made itself utterly dependent on China'
In this way, Gur writes, Iran “has made itself utterly dependent on China.”
Taking Iran down a notch – or ultimately enabling some sort of regime change or regime alteration à la the Venezuela model – would break China’s hold on Iran and, with it, Iran’s ability to test new Chinese equipment and to supply China with the oil it so desperately needs.
Will Israel be a beneficiary of this war? Of course. But when Iran began to rely on China so much, “it stopped being Israel’s problem and became America’s,” Gur emphasizes.
Yes, the Iranian mullahs have presided over a murderous regime that’s killed thousands, both directly and via proxies. And yes, the Islamic Republic’s slogan – “Death to America. Death to Israel” – is not mere words, as Iran has aptly proved in the wars to date. And yes, every day since Israel’s 12-Day War in June 2025, Iran has been aggressively building more and more missiles to the point where defensive interceptors like the THAAD, Patriot, or Iron Dome would simply have run out of projectiles.
But even for all that, this war would not have happened if the leadership of the US were not fully briefed on the two chessboards.
The most surprising development in the war so far has been the fact that China has not come to Iran’s aid, “leaving its closest Middle Eastern ally to burn,” Gur writes.
Philip Shetler-Jones, from the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, argues that Beijing is not “a superpower on the same level” as the US. “It is not equipped to protect its friends against this kind of action, even if it wanted to.”
“China does not view its ‘alliances’ in the same way the West does,” adds BBC China correspondent Laura Bicker. “It does not sign mutual defense treaties and will not come rushing to its ally’s aid.”
Ultimately, that abandonment “is a blow to Chinese soft power that no diplomatic offensive can easily repair,” Gur notes. America and Israel, on the other hand, have demonstrated they have “the will and capability to act decisively when [their] core interests are genuinely threatened.”
However, the current war plays out, this imbalance may be the most important outcome. “America went to war in Iran because Iran made itself a Chinese weapon,” concludes Gur. “The loudest voices in the debate,” he adds, “are still arguing about the smaller chessboard. [But] the war is being fought on the larger one.”
The writer’s book Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World was published earlier this year as an audiobook. It is available on Amazon and other online booksellers in print, e-book, and Audible formats. brianblum.com