WHY has China kept out of the Iran war? The question has flummoxed mainstream as well as the leftist commentators who see China as rivalling the US for world power.
Should not the world’s next hegemon be coming to the aid of its proxy as its own expansionist plans come under threat from the US war?
Just to be clear, Donald Trump’s strategy has China in its sights. The 2025 US National Security Strategy with its focus on the western hemisphere was thought to shift US strategy from the IndoPacific — in fact the “Donroe” block on Chinese investment in Latin America specifically aimed to shatter the Brics.
January’s National Defence Review clarified US security concerns: following homeland security, next in the line was China, then Russia, Iran and North Korea. In line with many of Joe Biden’s senior officials, these are evidently seen to form “the most dangerous alliance since WWII” — what if they were all to strike together against the West?
This prospect provides the rationale for rapid militarisation and war preparation but it is now facing a challenge: why is China, the main power behind the “deadly quartet” not leading the way to defend its ally and friend, Iran?
The UN security council (UNSC’s) dismal acquiescence, handing over its responsibilities for Palestine to the Board of Peace, helped unleash Trump’s global rampage. In turn Benjamin Netanyahu seized the opportunity to strike out for Greater Israel. But for both powers, action in fact was imperative — their plans for regional and global hegemony respectively were on the line.
In June 2025, a new phase of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) opened with the inauguration of the Iran-China Railway. This direct connection between Iran and central Asia and China offers an alternative economic corridor for oil and mineral exports to navigate around US sanctions and maritime bottlenecks such as the Malacca Straits.
Then September saw the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Tianjin which was to underscore the organisation’s growing relevance for the Middle East: Iran had become a full member in 2023 whilst Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt had become partners in 2022.
Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, together with India and Russia, were joined at the summit by Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos plus a representative from ASEAN, (Indonesia was to attend but domestic pressures kept the prime minister away).
Coming onto the horizon now was a new artery between the fast-growing and modernising regions of the Middle East/west Asia and south-east Asia linked by high-speed rail through Western China. The 21st century was being remade.
Mainstream commentators and critics on the left alike argue China’s passivity is down to its lack of military capacity: it simply doesn’t have the bases, the forward-deployed munitions, the longstanding military agreements that the US has built up over decades.
Nevertheless China remains for them the rival-in-waiting, building its strength. Its decades-long opposition to bloc-building, its assurances it will never be a hegemon, its disavowal of military alliances, its rejection of a G2 power-sharing with the US — all are dismissed as propaganda designed to lure others into its own sphere of influence.
China has in fact been far from inactive. Following the UN security council failure to rule Trump’s war as illegal, instead placing all the blame on Iran, China doubled down on diplomacy. A special envoy was sent to the region while Foreign Minister Wang Yi made multiple phone calls — to the Gulf states, Russia, Iran and Israel, then to Kaja Kallas at the European Commission and the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, relaying the message of regional support for international law and for a ceasefire.
China then met with Pakistan which had for its part been conferring with Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Together they produced a five-point peace plan covering the cessation of hostilities, protection of civilians, restoration of maritime security and the primacy of international law.
The China-Brazil six-point plan for a political settlement to the Ukraine crisis in May 2024 had been kicked to the sidelines by the Western powers despite support from across the global South.
This time China had drawn lessons to build support among key players prior to the announcement of the plan. Diplomatic work in the UNSC was also key in creating momentum for mediation with Russia and China vetoing a resolution calling for intervention to open the Straits of Hormuz.
Hours later, amid Trump’s threats to annihilate Iranian civilisation, Pakistan declared hostilities were to pause and negotiations begin.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Marco Rubio set out to trash the UN: it had failed Gaza, failed Ukraine, failed to deal with Iran’s radical Shia clerics — instead the US, he claimed, was succeeding, unencumbered by “the abstractions of international law.” The Iran war now brought the world to a turning point between diplomacy and war.
In exercising their veto power, both Russia and China referenced their failure to oppose the US-led bombing of Libya in 2011 which was to see much of north Africa descend into chaos. Another failure at the UNSC would have opened the door to worldwide chaos. Now blocking the move to legitimatise imperialist intervention into the Hormuz Straits, Russia and China stepped into the path of the fascist-backed warmongers. Together multilateral pressure and Iranian resistance brought the US to the negotiating table, staving off the slide into WWIII.
Wars reorder regions; they can reorder the world. The Iran war is setting off new trends prompting countries to look to weaning themselves off dependence on Middle East oil and gas, speeding up their green transition — they will need China’s help to do so.
The Gulf states’ bargain, exchanging security for US bases and huge arms sales, has put them in the firing line. In search of a more self-reliant security, they may build up their own military-industrial base — and with such an aggressive Israeli regime and a more determined Iran, the question of nuclear proliferation looms ever larger in the region. But with the US in general decline, new developments have also been influencing the reshaping of the region — the Saudi Arabia-Iran rapprochement brokered by China; the reconciliation between the Palestine groups again mediated by the Chinese, and now with Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, all members of the BRI, seeking to take greater responsibility for peace.
What the Middle East really needs is a new regional co-operative security arrangement — this these neighbouring powers must make for themselves. China does not seek to impose solutions: the China-Pakistan peace plan may seem vague but it is not just empty rhetoric. Rather it serves like a slogan, signalling direction, rallying regional states and movements to focus on the root causes of conflict while also turning world attention to renewing the role of the UN.
Had China stepped in to “defend” Iran, this would indeed have escalated the tensions tipping the world into WWIII. China’s style is instead to create an enabling environment for peace. Through the BRI and more intensified diplomacy, it works with the multipolar trend to encourage moves by states and regions towards strategic autonomy, widening spaces for countries to advance their own sovereignty not at each others expense but by relating internationally on a more equal basis to replace the Western patterns of domination and subordination.
Trump has now begun to block the Hormuz Strait putting the fragile ceasefire in jeopardy. China gets around one-third of its oil imports and a quarter of its gas imports from the Middle East so apparently Trump wants to “to pressure Iran and pressure China to pressure Iran.” Keir Starmer has ruled out sending in warships but his new military-cum-diplomatic coalition clearly aims to preserve a regional role for European Nato members, keeping Middle Eastern states divided the better to keep ruling over them.
Trump is due to meet Xi Jinping in mid-May and he wants to meet as a winner not a loser. A lot can happen in four weeks. With the US-Israeli war ongoing, the choice between unilateral aggression and a multipolar peace remains on a knife edge. The focus of attention over the war may now be shifting towards the US and China.
