A damning leaked intelligence report has revealed the extent to which China is using Donald Trump’s war in Iran to try to diminish the U.S.’s standing on the world stage.
The confidential Pentagon report, which two U.S. officials relayed to The Washington Post, reveals how Beijing is exploiting the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict to its advantage on key issues such as diplomacy, its economy, and plotting potential future military endeavors.
This includes portraying the U.S. as an increasingly weakened global power, forming stronger ties with other countries affected by the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and planning how the war may impact China’s own future military operations.
The leaked intel arrives at a particularly sensitive time, with Trump meeting for crunch talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where hot-button issues such as Iran, trade, and Taiwan are taking center stage.
Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told the Post that the report indicated how Trump’s war in Iran is “massively improving China’s geopolitical position” at the expense of the U.S.
“China has an opening to portray the United States as an aggressive, unilateralist power in decline because Washington cannot stop itself from getting embroiled in bloody and costly Middle East wars,” Stokes said.
The confidential U.S. intelligence analysis, produced for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine by the Joint Staff Intelligence Directorate, notes that China has been condemning the war in Iran in its public messaging. This includes describing the now 10-week war, which was not authorized by U.S. Congress, as “illegal.”
The report highlights that China could take advantage of how the war is draining U.S. stockpiles of weapons and munitions at an alarming rate. This depletion could influence whether China follows through with its threat of invading Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as its own, knowing the U.S. could be hindered in its response.
Beijing has also used the conflict in Iran as an opportunity to study how the U.S. fights wars and prepare for its own potential military operations.
Elsewhere, the report states that China has been selling weapons to Gulf countries that have come under retaliatory attack from Iran since the war began on Feb. 28.
China has also been helping countries around the world affected by the global oil and energy crisis resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As well as helping with energy needs, China has offered U.S. allies such as Thailand, Australia, and the Philippines long-term solutions, including Chinese-produced green energy technology.
“This is not altruism,” Hass told the Post. “It is Beijing seizing on an opportunity to drive wedges between America and its traditional partners.”
At the same time, China has not been overtly affected by the closure of the narrow shipping route because it has invested heavily in renewable energy and has its own vast oil resources.
In a statement to the Post, Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said that assertions that the “global balance of power has shifted towards any nation other than the United States of America are fundamentally false.”
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said: “The United States military is the greatest fighting force on the globe, with unmatched power on display for the entire world to see.”
Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu added that Beijing is committed to “promoting peace, and working to de-escalate the situation,” and that its “pressing priority now is to prevent by all means a relapse in fighting, rather than exploit the situation to throw mud at other countries.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, Pentagon, and Chinese Embassy for further comment.
