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Is the Iran War Preventing Major Powers from Aligning with China?
By Najiba Jalal
What is currently unfolding in Iran is not merely a temporary military escalation in a Middle East accustomed to igniting tensions; it is a revealing moment in the architecture of international conflict. In Tehran today, major powers are testing the limits of influence, deterrence, and the capacity to reshape geopolitical maps before the confrontation shifts to its Asian center. Thus, reading the events there through the lens of a regional crisis misses the core of the situation: Iran has become an early testing ground for the next global balance of power, where U.S. pressure intersects with China’s strategic interests in energy, critical trade routes, and geopolitical positioning. From this point, one can grasp the chain that stretches to Venezuela and Cuba, realizing that what is at play is not a series of crises, but a pathway of stages in a larger struggle.
In China’s calculations, Iran represents more than mere political partnership. It is an energy source outside the Western system, a site overlooking one of the world’s most crucial maritime corridors, and a hub within the Belt and Road Initiative. Any prolonged depletion of Tehran’s resources directly impacts Beijing’s ability to diversify its energy sources away from American maritime dominance. Therefore, the escalation against Iran is not read in Beijing as just an issue of the Middle East, but as a direct weakening of a pillar of its strategic security. For Washington, maintaining pressure on Tehran means reducing China’s maneuvering room in one of the world’s most critical regions for energy and transit.
Here lies the most decisive aspect of this current stage of global conflict: energy. China is an emerging industrial and military power, yet it depends heavily on oil and gas imports, particularly from the Gulf, Venezuela, and Iran. This dependency ties its strategic security to the continuous flow of energy. Consequently, any strategy aimed at containing China before a confrontation does not first go through weaponry, but via energy sources. The fundamental notion in these great calculations is simple yet harsh: if energy sources dry up, the capacity for warfare diminishes. No oil, no widespread conflict.
From this perspective, pressure on Iran begins to make sense as part of a broader design to reduce China’s energy alternatives. Iran stands as a resource outside the traditional Western sanctions framework, and weakening it means narrowing Beijing’s supply diversification options. From Tehran, we reach Caracas, where competition takes on a different form yet serves the same purpose. Venezuela is not just a nation suffocated by economic crisis; it is a financial and energy linchpin for China in the Western Hemisphere. Since Hugo Chávez’s presidency, Beijing has poured billions into loans in exchange for long-term oil supplies, investing in communications and infrastructure. This presence has made Caracas one of the most significant sources of oil untainted by direct American influence in China’s calculations.
The backdrop related to the arrest or intensified pressure on Nicolás Maduro stems from a long history of isolation, sanctions, and legal pursuits. The crisis began after disputed elections, exacerbated by an economic collapse, before becoming an international issue through oil and financial sanctions and U.S. support for the opposition, culminating in criminal charges and arrest warrants. The matter has transcended an internal legitimacy dispute to become a struggle over Venezuela’s position within an international network involving China, Russia, and Iran. Any change in Caracas essentially means diminishing one of the crucial energy sources upon which Beijing depends outside the Gulf.
Cuba, too, has returned to the forefront of American considerations not solely for its ideology, but due to its geographical position and growing cooperation with China in communications, infrastructure, ports, and technology. The island is perceived in Washington today as a potential avenue for Chinese positioning near the American heartland. Thus, economic sanctions remain stringent, accompanied by an increasingly assertive security rhetoric that redefines Cuba as a possible link in a Chinese influence ring in the Caribbean. Here as well, we are not dealing with a legacy of the Cold War, but with managing competition with Beijing over closely held spheres of influence.
What unites Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba is that they represent for China more than just political partners; they are points of energy, routes, and influence within a global network essential for Beijing to ensure the continuity of its ascent. Thus, the simultaneous American pressure on these entities does not seem to be merely a sequence of crises, but a strategy of gradual dismantlement of Chinese power sources before any direct confrontation. Military strength is not built solely on arms, but on the fuel that powers it.
In Western strategic analysis, 2027 is posed as a point when China may reach an advanced level of military readiness concerning Taiwan. However, reaching that moment assumes a fundamental condition: the continued flow of energy. If oil and gas sources are restricted, the capacity to engage in widespread conflict diminishes. Therefore, the peripheral wars we witness today seem to represent a phase in a deeper battle for power resources before the power test itself.
The world is not experiencing isolated crises in succession, but rather a gradual reshaping of the competitive landscape between the two largest powers. In this context, Iran is not the end, but rather the first phase in a struggle waged over energy sources as much as it is over geography. Within this logic, the real question behind all that is transpiring may be simpler than it seems: Can a major confrontation with China occur if its energy outlets tighten? Because the answer that governs these grand calculations remains decisive: Where there is no oil, there is no war.
