The Iran War: China's essential diplomacy
Confusion still reigns in Washington DC both over what Pres. Trump’s precise goals have been (and now are) for the still continuing and massively destructive Israeli-U.S. assault on Iran, and over the timeline and other modalities of how the two opposing sides— and the world!— can arrive at an exit from the war.
Last week I proposed one possible and desirable diplomatic off-ramp from the war. After writing that I judged I was, if anything, too modest in that proposal, which involved mainly attaining an accord among Iran and its neighbors on the Arab shore of the Gulf that they would all end the hosting of any foreign military bases anywhere near its shores. Of course, attaining such an agreement would mark a “sea-change” in the global force planning for the U.S. military and— given the pivotal role the Gulf/Khalij powers play in the world’s hydrocarbon system— it would have many other global impacts, too. But it strikes me now that looking at the diplomacy that’s needed to bring this ghastly, essentially West Asia-wide war to a sustainable end only at the level of inter-Khalij powers is probably a mistake. What all of us around the world who want to find this sustainable end need to do, I think, is to look at this task, from the get-go, at the level of global politics.
Which brings me to the role of China.
In the podcast conversation I conducted on March 5 with the Iran expert Barbara Slavin, she said at one point, “There is no international law under Donald Trump. The beneficiary is China, which comes across as the adult in the room and as the upholder of international law.” She was quite right.
To be fair (to myself), in the article I wrote March 6, I did note that China is uniquely positioned to be the key mediator between Iran and its Arab neighbors across the Gulf— not least because of the breakthrough diplomacy that FM Wang Yi had conducted in early 2023, which effected a long-overdue rapprochement between Iran and Gulf heavyweight Saudi Arabia. But now, I think it’s appropriate to specify that the Chinese diplomatic role in/for the region needs to far broader than “just” adjudicating cross-Gulf relations and establishing, as I had proposed, an all-Gulf “Zone of Peace.” All of us around the world who want to see an end to the hyper-militarized destruction that has ravaged much of West Asia over recent decades, now sorely need China’s leadership in the globe-girdling diplomatic campaign that will be required to bring that about.
In this context, I see Beijing as having a number of key assets:
It has good working relations with all the parties involved, including Israel.
It has its longstanding adherence to the principles of the UN Charter, and to UN institutions, and the strong role it plays in the Security Council.
It wields significant economic power in ways that in many cases bypass the rule of the Mighty Dollar, which has long been a key tool in Washington’s campaign to immiserate many of the nations of West Asia (and elsewhere) and to bend them to Washington’s will.
It exercises independence of national decisionmaking. (Though Beijing still has significant economic ties with Israel, it has decreased those in recent years and is not nearly as vulnerable to the many forms of blackmail/pressure that Tel Aviv likes to wield as are all the other Permanent Members of the Security Council.)
It has a rich base of hi-tech and mil-tech expertise that it can use to contribute to the security of West Asia rather than (as the U.S. and Israel do) using it to radically undermine the security of the states and peoples of the region.
The PRC has no “legacy” of colonial domination of the region and has frequently in the past aligned itself with anti-colonial tendencies and movements.
I will come back to #5 in the above list, a little later. For now, I just want to note that though China is currently still in its New Year’s festivities/holiday season, and the leaders in Beijing have been deeply engaged in their periodic “Two Sessions” of nationwide decisionmaking, still both the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry have been actively working on the Iran War file.
At the Foreign Ministry, spokesperson Guo Jiakun stressed today that “China is deeply concerned about the continued escalation of tensions in the Middle East” and called on all parties to “immediately halt military operations and return to dialogue and negotiations as soon as possible.”
Guo noted that Foreign Minister Wang had been pursuing intensive diplomatic engagements in recent days, including through phone calls with his counterparts in Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and Qatar. Guo also added that the Chinese government’s special envoy on the Middle East issue is currently conducting shuttle diplomacy in the region, though he gave no further details.
Over at the Defense Ministry, spokesperson Jiang Bin called on relevant parties to immediately stop hostilities and return to dialogue and negotiation. He spelled out that,
the military strikes launched by the United States and Israel against Iran without authorization from the United Nations Security Council seriously violate international law and the basic norms governing international relations.
“It is our consistent position that resorting to force is not the right solution to international disputes,” Jiang said, adding that “the continuation and escalation of hostilities produces no winner, and will only push the Middle East into a dangerous abyss, inflicting greater suffering on the peoples of the region.”
Meantime, China’s central broadcasting body, CGTN, has been maintaining a good information page on its English-language website containing updates on developments in the war.
Today’s is here. It contains a short video of an interview that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi gave to CGTN Europe, in which he underlined that the IRI considers it now “has the upper hand” in the war and that “The cessation of the war is in the hands of the IRI.”
A shorter version of Gharibabadi’s statement— along with a slightly less assertive statement that FM Araghchi made yesterday— can also be found here.
So now, while I reiterate my call that everyone interested in finding a sustainable diplomatic off-ramp to this ghastly war should seek to work with, and encourage Beijing’s efforts, I want to go back and briefly revisit Asset #4 that I’d mentioned in the listing I made above of the assets China can bring to its West Asia-wide diplomacy. That is, the rich base it has of hi-tech and mil-tech expertise that can be used to contribute to the security of West Asia, rather than— as so much U.S. and Israeli technology do— radically undermining it.
One notable case in point is the satellite imaging (and analysis) capabilities that Chinese private and state entities can now deploy over the whole region, that can and should be used to help build the kind of transparency and trust-building that will be essential to any serious de-escalation and eventual disarming efforts. As we know, during the build-down from the big U.S.-Soviet rivalry in Europe from the 1980s on, the institution of trusted monitoring and compliance capabilities played a key role. And so they can, too, in any (much needed!) build-down of the horrendous rivalries now tearing so much of West Asia apart.
So here is one intriguing case-study: that of a private-sector Chinese company called MizarVision, which uses AI to analyze data received from the broad cohort of satellites that Beijing is able to maintain over West Asia, Ukraine, and probably also many other areas.
In January, Mizar took the intriguing step of setting up a Twitter/X account. It lay apparently dormant until February 24, at which point it started releasing near real-time overhead images of many crucial U.S. bases all across West Asia and some Israeli bases. Between then and the start of the Israeli-U.S. attack four days later, it released a total of 30 images in that very public way, and each one was carefully labelled (presumably by either its own AI or that of a partner who received recognition a few days in, called MiEntropy.)
Here are a few of the images released on X prior to Israel and the U.S. launching the war:
(Click on any one to see the Chinese-language labels that Mizar/MiEntropy put onto the objects viewed, and the English-language summary Mizar put into the description, along with the time it was uploaded— often very close to the time the image was captured.)
Those images, most of them taken in the hours shortly before the war’s launch, included shots of two locations inside Israel, of the big military base the U.S. maintains at Al-Udeid, Qatar, and of Diego Garcia.
Since the start of the war, Mizar has continued to release images on its X account, with these ones documenting the destruction from the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran and also from some of Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Gulf countries hosting U.S. bases. (See the image from the UAE’s Jebel Ali port, above.)
There are, of course, numerous comments one can make about this phenomenon of the Chinese private/public entities collaborating (as they clearly have) to (A) analyze and (B) to make public not only the fact of their imaging and speedy-analysis capabilities but also— in a clearly selective manner— some of its products.
On the selectivity angle I note, for example, that Mizar has not yet released through its X account any images of the degree of destruction that Israel has suffered during the current war, despite requests from some of its followers on X that it do so. This is not to say, of course, that it does not have any such images. From the ones that they released prior to the war’s outbreak it was clear that they had such a capability.
Who knows, also, what additional stacks of intel Mizar and its partners most likely shared with the Iranian military prior to (and since) the war’s start? These Chinese satellite and image-analysis entities are clearly significant players in the ongoing war. Players, moreover, that it seems that very few U.S. or Israeli decision-makers or think-tank experts were even aware of.
Anyway, my point here is that in the context of any broad and effective international effort to end unjust wars and colonial domination in West Asia, entities like these ones from China can play a key role in providing real-time or near-real-time monitoring of the compliance of all the local parties with any agreement reached.
The satellite capabilities of the U.S. and the UN have thus far proven quite unable (or unwilling?) to provide anything like such trustworthy monitoring of agreements like the many reached for Gaza, or for Syria, or for Lebanon over the very painful period of the past few years.
One final data point here is that the U.S.-based satellite firm Planet Labs, whose images had previously been a valuable resource for analysts studying, e.g., Israeli violations in Gaza, yesterday announced that because of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran it would now impose a two-week delay for access to its satellite images of the Middle East, up from the 96-hour delay that it announced last week.
That report, from AFP, noted that Planet, “did not say whether the decision was taken in response to an official US request.”