China’s Iran strategy an exercise in power without projection

Wenran Jiang, the founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is an adviser at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.The spectacle of US President Donald Trump thanking China for staying “neutral” with regard to the US-Israeli war against Iran would have been unthinkable a year ago.Yet at the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, he credited Beijing – alongside Moscow – with preventing a full-blown catastrophe. His observation that China “could have sent in an oil ship with six destroyers alongside of it, on each side” but chose restraint, captured the essence of Beijing’s strategic poise: a demonstration of power that needed no overt display.That restraint was underpinned by quiet but decisive leverage. Tehran’s gratitude was palpable. Iranian officials, from the foreign ministry to the embassy in Beijing, publicly expressed appreciation for China’s role.