China’s pressure campaign meets Trump’s Iran gambit
My name is George Gerbo and welcome to The Washington Times Weekly, where we have the opportunity to sit down with our reporters and take a look at their coverage of the latest news and events.
I’m joined by national security correspondent Bill Gertz.
[GERBO] Let’s start by taking a look at the war in Iran, which has now been going on for two weeks. President Trump has been a little vague at times, a little contradictory with some of his goals and war objectives. Sometimes he is pushed to overthrow the Iranian regime. Other times, more generally, he wants Iran to no longer be a threat to the United States, Israel and the Middle East as a whole. As you wrote recently, this is a bit of a departure from his initial campaign for president, where he put out some pretty strongly anti-interventionist messages. And now he’s changed a little bit on that.
[GERTZ] Yes, the MAGA base has been what I would call neo-isolationist. And the president was asked about it recently – when asked if JD Vance was less supportive of Iranian action. JD Vance, within the administration, represents, I think, the neo-isolationist trend among the MAGA faithful. And the president was asked if he wasn’t enthusiastic. And he was very honest in saying, yes, he was less enthusiastic about going to war with Iran than the president himself. But on the other hand, he remains in favor of military action.
The president has sort of evolved into that position. Again, before his election to a second term, he spoke very specifically about ending the endless war for regime change. Now, MAGA faithful say the word “endless” is a warning about this particular war of regime change in Iran. I am not sure that military action based on air power and strikes against naval forces can actually cause a capitulation of the Iranian regime. And at least so far we haven’t seen that.
[GERBO] One of the related impacts that might go unnoticed — and that you’ve written about — is across Asia and China, where disruptions to the transit and export of Middle Eastern oil, from Iran, could limit China’s access to energy, which could harm its economy. China is very dependent on these foreign oil imports. It buys Iranian oil, which at the same time helps keep Iran afloat while it is subject to multiple sanctions from democracies and other countries around the world. And there could almost be a net positive effect for the United States in this part of Asia that diplomats may not have expected.
[GERTZ] Yes, this reflects an in-depth article I wrote for the Washington Times last week, which really delved into the subject of the impacts of the Iranian operation on China. The most immediate is the fact that China will lose access to a large amount of cheap oil. Ninety percent of Iran’s oil exports go to China at discounted rates, often aboard fleets of ghost tankers, that is, tankers designed to be undetectable from a sanctions perspective.
You combine that with the fact that they’re losing oil from Venezuela, which is a much smaller percentage, like eight to nine percent, with China getting their oil from Venezuela. And I spoke with a number of experts, including a former secretary of state and Chinese experts, who said the president’s calculations in conducting operations in Iran clearly had a major impact on China’s energy. And the thing to understand about energy in China is that China does not have domestic sources of oil. Its economy, which is booming, depends heavily on these foreign exports. It therefore depends heavily on these oil exports. And in fact, the fact that they are losing access, or could lose access, to Iranian oil clearly has repercussions in Beijing and in the Communist Party leadership compound in Zhongnanhai, Beijing.
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