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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/06/china-iran-failure-strategy/
How China's Enormous Bet on Iran Failed
(Washington Post) Miles Yu - For more than a decade, Beijing has worked quietly and methodically to turn Iran into the keystone of its Middle East strategy. That strategy has now collapsed. Iran stood out as the most aggressive and strategically valuable pillar of a China-centered alignment of anti-U.S. states. The Chinese Communist Party's investment in Iran has been monumental. In March 2021, China and Iran signed a comprehensive strategic partnership, which included Beijing pledging $400 billion in long-term infrastructure and energy investments under its Belt and Road Initiative. In 2023, Iran was welcomed into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China became the dominant buyer of Iranian oil, purchasing 90% of Iran's oil exports - only 12% of China's total oil imports, but crucial to Iran's economic survival. In political terms, Iran provided a forward base for China inside a region historically shaped by American power. By backing militant proxies, Tehran has kept the Middle East in constant crisis. A U.S. absorbed in managing Iran would have fewer resources and less strategic focus to devote to countering China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. The current war has not only devastated Iran's nuclear infrastructure and its conventional long-range missile and drone capabilities, it has changed the strategic equation overnight. The coordinated U.S. and Israeli military campaigns have decimated Iran's military-industrial backbone and weapons stockpile. Iran's ability to wield nuclear brinkmanship as a shield for regional aggression was dramatically reduced. China had bet on a confident, defiant and nuclear-ambitious Iran. Instead, it is left with a battered partner whose utility has sharply diminished. The lesson is unmistakable. Grand strategy built on vulnerable and tyrannical proxies carries inherent risk. The writer is a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute.