Tehran burns as Chinese experts debate Beijing's interests

Editors Note: There was a mix up with some of the URLs (and my translation), which has been corrected and edits made. Thanks for those who flagged these issues.

I have received a large volume of questions on China’s view on the Iran war. It is diverse. I figured that in addition to Andrea Ghiselli’s great piece on this (go subscribe to his substack), I would also add a review of the Chinese experts I am following as well as my own concluding thoughts and observations.

When the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, killing Supreme Leader Khamenei and forty senior Iranian officials in a single night, China’s foreign ministry condemned the strikes within hours as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

The rhetoric was predictable. What was less predictable is what China’s scholars, military analysts, and state media commentators said next for a domestic audience. They asked the harder question: does Beijing actually need the Islamic Republic to survive?

Their answer? Not necessarily.

The dialogue emerging from China’s strategic community is uncomfortable for those who assume Beijing and Tehran stand in ideological solidarity.

The Consensus View — and Its Limits

A dominant Chinese analytical position holds that the Islamic Republic will not collapse. Tang Zhichao of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences declared on China News Network that the negotiations preceding the strikes were “completely a smokescreen, just like in June last year,” identifying US regime change as the explicit objective. Fan Hongda of Shaoxing University, one of China’s foremost Iran specialist, called the changes of regime change through the Ayatollah’s assaination “nearly impossible”, arguing Iran’s political foundations are too deeply rooted in religious, social, and historical structures for external military force to uproot.

Liu Zhongmin of Shanghai International Studies University assessed that short-term regime collapse is unlikely without a ground invasion — but added a caveat that should concern Washington and Beijing alike. The crisis may trigger “factional splits, power grabs, or political restructuring” representing “a long-term hidden danger.” He goes on to argue, “The advantage of a ‘quick strike and quick retreat’ is avoiding being dragged into war, but if the goal is to transform Iran, the issue becomes more complex. Is it to preserve a "backboneless" Islamic Republic of Iran, softened towards the West? Or is it to completely change its political system and create a completely new Iran?”

He expresses doubt that Trump’s approach can achieve true regime change. The regime may survive the strikes. The system may not survive the regime.

This is the analytical gap Chinese scholars are beginning to fill.

The Economic Case for Flexibility

Qin Tian of CICIR noted that the strikes combined “military means and color revolution methods,” signaling Washington intends to shape whatever successor configuration emerges. The question Qin raises is one that Beijing will have to eventually answer, whether that successor threatens Chinese interests more than the Islamic Republic protects them.

The answer from China’s financial commentors is also revealing. Writing on Huxiu, analyst Xiao Xiaopao pointed out that Iranian oil accounts for only roughly 13.4% of China’s seaborne crude imports, purchased primarily by small “teapot” refineries in Shandong, not major state enterprises. China has real interests in Iran, she argued, but they are not vital. Singapore-based columnist Yu Zeyuan put the logic more plainly: “Regardless of who is in power, it is unlikely economic ties with China would be completely severed. This is the main reason China’s official response has been relatively calm.”

A more open Iranian economy, whatever government emerges, still points toward China because geography, infrastructure dependencies, and market scale make Chinese partnership the path of least resistance. From this view, the Islamic Republic is useful, but it is not irreplaceable.

The Hawkish Strand in Beijing

Most striking is how publicly some Chinese analysts have questioned Iran’s value as a partner altogether. Zhan Hao, a nationalist commentator on Guancha, argued Tehran had systematically failed to honor the 2021 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement, preferred Russian weapons, used the agreement as leverage with the West, and leased Persian Gulf islands to India rather than China. His conclusion was blunt: the Middle East is “an important strategic interest area, but absolutely not a core interest.”

Tian Wenlin of Guancha reinforced the pattern after the 12 day war arguing that after Iran reached the 2015 JCPOA with Washington, “Iran’s attitude toward China immediately cooled.” The implication is pointed — any Iranian government’s orientation toward Beijing depends not on ideology but on external pressure. Tehran turns to China when it has nowhere else to turn. Sanctions are China’s greatest source of leverage in the relationship. Sanctions relief, paradoxically, dilutes it.

The Precedent Fear

If Chinese analysts are privately sanguine about who governs Iran, they are genuinely alarmed about what the operation signals for great-power competition more broadly. Cui Shoujun of Renmin University stated flatly that China would not provide military or security support — but identified the deeper anxiety: “China certainly has this concern — that the US will target nations it deems hostile with surgical strikes to seek regime change” and that this could “become a routine tactic.” Ding Long of Shanghai International Studies University warned the US and Israel would employ “salami-slicing tactics to continuously weaken the state, incite domestic unrest and jeopardize Iran’s security” — a template Chinese strategists recognize as applicable well beyond Tehran.

Shen Yi of Fudan University framed the operation with the Chinese idiom “smashing the cup as a signal” — a prearranged move disguised as diplomacy. He then posed the question Beijing is privately turning over: “Will large-scale internal change occur within Iran?”

The view from the military

PLA-affiliated and military analysts have focused on operational and strategic implications rather than Iranian domestic politics. Zhang Junshe, a retired PLA Navy senior captain and military affairs commentator told the Global Times that “By attacking the Iranian Navy, the US likely aims to completely take control of the Gulf region.” He assessed a ground war as unlikely — “the US is unlikely to get bogged down like in Iraq and Afghanistan” — and predicted Iran would “deploy missiles and UAVs and may mobilize Axis of Resistance forces.”

Wang Yunfei, a military affairs expert analyzed the intelligence dimensions on March 1: “Iran was said to have been heavily infiltrated, leaving little room for secrecy, especially regarding senior leaders’ movements.” He assessed that while US-Israeli forces “far surpass Iran militarily and technologically,” Iran’s retaliatory capabilities “exceeded expectations,” particularly the Fattah hypersonic missile with an interception success rate “seemingly below 30 percent.”

What Beijing Wants from the Rubble

Li Shaoxian of Ningxia University connected the Iran strikes to Trump’s January success in Venezuela — two regime-change operations in two months, each combining military and economic coercion. Fan Hongda’s framework for Washington’s real objective is the most analytically useful on offer from Chinese scholarship: not an overthrown Iran, but a “spineless” one — a regime making major nuclear concessions while remaining nominally intact, selected from among Iran’s surviving factions. China can work with that outcome. It prefers a strong Iranian counterweight to US regional dominance, but it has thrived inside a sanctions-constrained Iran for a decade.

Sun Degang of Fudan University and Pan Guang, Senior Advisor to the Chinese Association of Middle East Studies, have looked at how this is shaping of regional order over regime in Iran. Sun warned that Tehran might abandon "limited war" because this engagement concerns the "survival of the regime," potentially blockading the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting global supply chains. Pan argued the strikes constitute "a severe shock to the post-World War II international order."

In this view, the collapse of regional order and Gulf chaos— blockaded Strait of Hormuz, disrupted supply chains, cascading instability across the Gulf states where China has invested heavily in Vision 2030 integration—threatens China's broader Middle Eastern investments far more than any single regime's fate.

I think the order question highlight the real bottom line: Beijing doesn’t need the Islamic Republic. It needs a Gulf that stays open for business. If those two things coincide, all the better. If they don’t — and February 28 made the question live in a way it never was before — China’s analysts have to think deeply through which one matters more. The answer will define how Beijing positions itself in whatever Iran emerges from the wreckage.

My take on the issue

It may seem obvious to say, but none of this is comfortable for Chinese policymakers, and the discomfort is visible in the lag between events and response. Beijing does not want to see Iran diminished and Washington in effective control of the Persian Gulf — China’s energy lifelines run through it, and a US-dominated Gulf reshapes the entire strategic geography of the Indo-Pacific competition. At the same time, Chinese officials cannot afford to see their deep investments in the GCC destabilized by the same Iranian partner they refuse to restrain. Previous Gulf frustrations with China, like over the 2019 drone strike into Aramco’s refinery and China’s refusal to condemn Iran, are childsplay compared to the Iranian rocket attacks against the Gulf, including hitting areas near where Chinese companies are operational in Jebel Ali and adjacent zones. The theoretical “what if” scenario is over, and Gulf capitals are absorbing Iranian missile fire. Chinese infrastructure investments, financial exposure, and Vision 2030 partnership deals sit inside the blast radius.

This is Beijing’s paralysis in plain terms. Condemning the US and Israeli strikes too loudly looks like endorsing Iranian aggression against China’s own Gulf partners. Pressuring Iran to stand down looks like capitulating to Washington. So China does neither, and the silence — now softening into carefully worded condemnations of all parties — speaks for itself.

Chinese colleagues will rightly point out that Washington and Tel Aviv are the primary belligerents, and that it is not Beijing’s responsibility to police a conflict it did not start. Any rational analyst must acknowledge this premise, even if they blame China for buying Iranian oil and reportedly supporting Iran’s rebuilding of its ballistic missile program. That argument is not wrong. But it is incomplete. China’s core strategic partners in the Gulf are being targeted by China’s other strategic partner, and Beijing’s chosen instrument of non-interference offers them nothing. The 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement that China brokered was a genuine diplomatic achievement — it restored dialogue, normalized communication, reopened trade channels after years of rupture. But it was never a security guarantee. China does not do security guarantees. Its diplomatic model is built on sovereignty, non-interference, and the deliberate rejection of the enforcement role Washington has long played in the region. That model may have rhetorical virtues, but it offers to practical solutions for Gulf security

When Iranian missiles land near GCC infrastructure and Beijing’s response is a statement calling for “all parties to exercise restraint,” China’s Gulf partners notice. The Iran-Saudi deal bought goodwill. It did not buy Beijing the credibility of a power that will show up when it matters. That gap — between China’s economic footprint in the Gulf and its political will to defend the order that footprint depends on — is the defining vulnerability of Beijing’s Middle East strategy, and no amount of infrastructure investment closes it.

This episode will also transform Gulf security perspectives on its relationship with the United States and potential limits that can bring when it comes to reliability (the Arabs sought for diplomacy and Trump brought them war). This episode also showed them that China is also not a reliable alternative. But, for China, this is fine. They never tried to be.