An Attack on Iran Would Amount to a Declaration of War on China
China gets nearly 20 percent of its oil from Iran, and the threat of US military action against Iran has prompted China to order its banks to dump US Treasuries, dealing another blow to the dollar.
The growing rumors of a military conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran didn’t emerge overnight. They’ve been brewing for years, ever since the Islamic Revolution and the Iran hostage crisis, when then-President Jimmy Carter first imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
Washington then used Iraq as a proxy to fight the Iranians in the bloody Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein, then a US ally, used mustard gas to exterminate tens of thousands of Iranians, writes Leo Hohman .
With Israel seen by many in the region as a hostile US/British outpost in the Middle East, Iran fought back by attacking Israel through its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.
Israelis responded to the October 7 massacre, which they attribute to Iran, by helping to orchestrate a coup in Syria and subsequently eliminating Hezbollah commanders through military and intelligence operations, including the detonation of pagers. Israel also assassinated Iranian commanders during the 12-day war in June 2024. Trump himself ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.
But now the whole dynamic appears to be coming to a head with what could become an all-out war between the US and Iran.
It’s important to understand that this isn’t so much a war against Iran as it is an attempt to further increase pressure on China and Russia.
Like Venezuela before the US attacked that country and kidnapped its leader, Iran is a major source of oil for China.
But while China only got about 5 percent of its total oil supply from Venezuela, it gets 19.8 percent from Iran.
China could lose its Venezuelan oil supply.
China cannot afford to lose both Venezuelan and Iranian oil.
By denying China access to cheap oil from its allies, Washington hopes to force China to buy oil from Washington and/or countries allied with it at a much higher price. According to calculations by a trader cited by Reuters, Chinese refiners, for example, would save approximately $8 to $10 per barrel by buying Iranian light crude instead of unsanctioned crude from Oman.
China has the world’s largest industrial base and therefore requires enormous amounts of energy to power its industry. Subtract 25 percent from that, and suddenly China’s industrial economy is in real danger.
We know that most wars are fought over resources, and this war is no exception. All the talk about Iran financing terrorism and murdering its own people is merely window dressing intended to stoke war hysteria among the ignorant masses in America and the West. Washington loves terrorism when it’s carried out in its name. That’s why the Ukrainians can get away with assassinating Russian generals without Washington saying a word, and why the Israelis can invade any country they want and assassinate the top leaders of their enemies. If Russia, China, or Iran did that, it would be called terrorism.
International geopolitics is ruthless and devious, conducted without regard for human life or fundamental morality. It’s all about wielding power and acquiring resources.
If China sees Washington’s actions against Iran as a backdoor way to deprive its fuel-dependent industrial base of the energy resources it needs, Beijing will likely interpret it as a declaration of war by the US.
Washington risks China no longer deeming it in its best interest to remain neutral now that the US is acting increasingly aggressively against its allies. It could afford to abandon Venezuela, but can it also afford to cut ties with Iran?
The question on Trump’s mind must be: do we really want to cut off the oil supply to China and drive the dragon further into the arms of the Russian bear?
Russia already has its hands full with Ukraine, a war that would have ended within weeks if the US and NATO hadn’t channeled so much weapons and money to Ukraine. The US has imposed sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil and now appears poised to attempt to acquire the oil flowing from Iran to China.
Washington has already backed Russia into a corner. Is China next?
It’s not that China has no influence on the US. It has non-military options to counter the West and will likely play those before taking military action. China could cut off the supply of rare earth metals to the US. It could halt the processing of essential medicines like antibiotics, most of which are exported from China to the US.
China may be ramping up its economic warfare game, and there are signs it is doing just that.
In the latest shocking move, Xi has ordered Chinese banks to dump US Treasuries . Major Chinese banks have already been quietly dumping Treasuries, but now they are officially and widely abandoning the dollar. This is also why China has been buying gold at an unprecedented pace.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to compensate for China’s loss of willingness to finance American debt, the US has printed money to purchase its own debt. This is similar to printing your own dollars on an inkjet printer to pay off your own credit card debt.
The result of this insane monetary policy will be increased inflation. Americans already struggling to pay for groceries, car repairs, rising insurance premiums, and much more will face even greater inflationary economic pressure as a result of Donald Trump’s reckless foreign policy. This phenomenon couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Trump administration, as we head toward the midterm elections in November.
The bottom line is that there is a major battle going on for global monetary supremacy and a race to see who can control the most gold, minerals, and oil resources.
Since the end of World War II, the US has amassed great wealth by using its dollar as the global reserve currency. But the US has abused that privilege by weaponizing its currency and imposing sanctions on countries that don’t cooperate with Washington’s policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. As a result, after decades of watching the US punish countries simply for wanting to conduct business and trade with the world, as sovereign nations have the right to do, many countries have now slammed the door behind them. They are dumping their dollars and no longer buying US Treasuries. They have seen what happened to Russia and now China and fear they are next.
The longstanding hostility between Iran and the US/Israel is a context generally ignored by the mainstream media. They want you to believe that this war, if it comes, is solely about liberating Iran’s oppressed people, while in reality it’s about redrawing maps and forcing a reshuffling of countries in a way that benefits the US and Israel, with the risk of dragging China and Russia into a regional or even global military confrontation.
Some suggest that the US is due for a reckoning, that its influence in the Middle East and the world is no longer commensurate with its economic and military might, that its power is based more on perception than reality.
Could there be a reckoning in 2026, with Iran being the place where the US has gone too far, not only against Iran but also against China?
Time will tell.
Unlike the 12-day war of last June, the goal of this next military attack has been openly declared: “regime change.”
But therein lies the problem.
The Iranian regime will not simply pack up and leave at the first sign of bombs falling on Tehran.
They will brace themselves and wait for the bombings.
The only way to quickly achieve regime change would be to deploy troops en masse, something Trump appears reluctant to do, given the risk of unacceptable American casualties just before the election.
To force regime change by bombing Iran without troops on the ground would require months of continuous airstrikes.
Military strategists such as Colonel Douglas MacGregor have warned that the US lacks the supplies or industrial capacity to wage a months-long bombing campaign against Iran.
Trump has truly backed himself into a corner. He has amassed a massive naval fleet in the Persian Gulf with the sole purpose of attacking Iran and overthrowing the regime.
Perhaps he prefers a negotiated “deal” in which the Iranian regime remains in power in exchange for certain concessions regarding Iran’s support for anti-Israel proxies and a crackdown on protests at home. But then he’ll have to contend with the Israelis. They are determined to overthrow the regime and are counting on Trump to do so. Neoconservatives in Washington are also pressuring Trump to pull the trigger and fully invade Iran, if that’s what it takes to oust the Islamic government.
The world is changing, and not in a way that benefits US interests. Unfortunately, Washington itself has brought these changes about.