Beijing has used the conflict to reach out to the Gulf and Indo-Pacific nations while gaining a better understanding of the US military, the newspaper says
The US-Israeli war against Iran has handed China a strategic opening to chip away at US influence on every major front, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a classified intelligence analysis.
Two US officials familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the document was produced by the Joint Staff’s intelligence directorate for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine. It is said to focus on four main dimensions: Diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
This comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s high-stakes talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing.
Since the US and Israel started the war in late February, China has reportedly sold weapons to Persian Gulf countries, which came under retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes, the report says. Though Beijing has denied arming Iran, in recent years, it has been engaged in multi-billion-dollar weapons deals with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Regarding the informational domain, according to the report, as the Iran war was not approved by the US Congress or the UN Security Council, it allowed China to portray it as illegal, as it sought to “undermine the image of the US as a responsible steward of the rules-based international order.”
The war has also bled US military resources, most notably its stockpiles of cruise and air defense missiles, which would be critical in a potential stand-off over Taiwan, the document says.
In addition, an earlier WaPo report suggested that Iranian strikes on US military installations across the region were far more damaging than Washington acknowledged, with at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment damaged or destroyed.
China has meanwhile gained a better understanding of how the US military operates and has planned accordingly, the paper says.
Last but not least, while China, the world’s largest oil importer, has been hit by the Hormuz crisis, it has maintained energy self-sufficiency due to its coal output and green technology boom. This has allowed Beijing to play energy benefactor, reaching out to Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, and others with supplies of jet fuel and green energy technology, according to the WaPo.
“China is the second-most-insulated country in the world to the energy crisis, after only the United States,” Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution, told the newspaper.
“This is not altruism,” he added. “It is Beijing seizing on an opportunity to drive wedges between America and its traditional partners.”
Beijing has called for an end to the hostilities in the Middle East and has condemned the US military action. After Washington sanctioned several Chinese refineries for doing business with Iran, Beijing ordered the companies not to comply with the measures.
