Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Middle East and North Africa

As the United States undertakes another military venture in the Middle East, many in Washington are asking what an attack on Iran means for China. It has become increasingly common in U.S. political discourse to describe China and Iran, alongside Russia and North Korea, as an axis of “upheaval,” “chaos,” or “autocracy,” supposedly united in their efforts to undermine U.S. power and reshape the international order. Despite pushback that this is a mischaracterization of China’s foreign policy, certain hawkish circles are casting the war as not just an attack on Iran but also a strategic move against China, with Beijing’s decision not to intervene cited as evidence of the limits of its influence.

Such arguments—that China stands to lose a crucial anti-American partner or that that its restraint signals weakness—rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s interests in the Middle East and its strategy for pursuing them. China’s engagement there in recent years has been largely pragmatic and belies the notion of an anti-American alliance with the Islamic Republic. Beijing’s priority is not the survival of the current Iranian regime but the preservation of its own economic, energy, and technological interests in whatever regional security order emerges after the conflict.

As the United States undertakes another military venture in the Middle East, many in Washington are asking what an attack on Iran means for China. It has become increasingly common in U.S. political discourse to describe China and Iran, alongside Russia and North Korea, as an axis of “upheaval,” “chaos,” or “autocracy,” supposedly united in their efforts to undermine U.S. power and reshape the international order. Despite pushback that this is a mischaracterization of China’s foreign policy, certain hawkish circles are casting the war as not just an attack on Iran but also a strategic move against China, with Beijing’s decision not to intervene cited as evidence of the limits of its influence.

Such arguments—that China stands to lose a crucial anti-American partner or that that its restraint signals weakness—rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s interests in the Middle East and its strategy for pursuing them. China’s engagement there in recent years has been largely pragmatic and belies the notion of an anti-American alliance with the Islamic Republic. Beijing’s priority is not the survival of the current Iranian regime but the preservation of its own economic, energy, and technological interests in whatever regional security order emerges after the conflict.

China and Iran have maintained a mutually beneficial partnership for years. China covertly purchases Iranian oil........

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