In war with Iran, China sees a familiar pattern of U.S. mistakes

BEIJING — The Trump administration has repeatedly framed the war in Iran as a quick and winnable fight and vowed to “completely and decisively” defeat the Islamic Republic in a way not comparable to the “stupid” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But from China’s perspective, the parallels are clear.

“You can blow up everything, you can destroy everything,” a Chinese official told The Times, describing the Americans, “but you don’t have a strategy.”

President Trump arrived in Beijing this week to meet with the Chinese government, confident as ever of its rise to power on the world stage, weighing its trump card and still bemused that the US administration has chosen another costly war in the Middle East.

China has watched as the United States, which has been fighting an unbeatable foe for seven weeks, depleted nearly half of its top munitions stockpile, including THAAD and Patriot batteries, and fired the Army chief of staff along with other Pentagon leaders who warned of critical shortages.

Trump’s national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the military operation that started the war, known as Operation Epic Rage, was “over.”

But the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital commercial waterways, remains effectively closed. Iran’s attacks in the region continue. Talks between Washington and Tehran diplomatic agreement could not be reached to bring a definitive end to the conflict.

“The Chinese have great respect for the operational proficiency of U.S. forces, but they recognize that, at least so far, the Trump administration has failed to achieve its core goals of going to war with Iran,” said David Ochmanek, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense now at Rand Corp.

The war gives Beijing “an opportunity to double down on the claims they’ve been making for the past year and a half,” Ochmanek said. [People’s Republic of China]”It is the power of global stability, not the USA.”

The war allowed China to demonstrate diplomatic courage. The initial ceasefire reached between the United States and Iran last month was finalized only after Beijing pressured Tehran to reach a deal. China’s advocacy of an open strait (rejecting Iran’s attempts to impose a toll system) and opposition to the US war has allowed Beijing to exert influence on both sides.

This also led to costs. Beijing’s allies realized that the government did not come to Tehran’s defense at the beginning of the war. And China has its own interest in a free and open waterway through which nearly 50% of the country’s crude oil imports pass each day.

Leading up to the start of the war and in its first weeks, Washington diverted key military assets from Asia — where Trump’s own national security strategy said they were needed most — to the Middle East.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was rerouted from the South China Sea, along with a large number of advanced missile interceptors from South Korea and Japan and nearly the entire U.S. inventory of long-range air-to-surface missiles in the Pacific.

Policy experts at the Pentagon were brought in to discuss a possible invasion of Kharg Island, the jewel of Iran’s oil industry, and to draw lessons from planning the defense of Taiwan, according to a Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak publicly. A Marine Expeditionary Unit was sent to the region from Okinawa for the possible operation.

Chinese officials and analysts have been frank in their assessments of U.S. hard power and are impressed that the military they acknowledge remains the best in the world.

But Beijing sees a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: the belief that military force alone can reshape political realities; a view further weakened by pressures on a democratic government where public opinion grows impatient with wars lasting days or weeks.

The Chinese autocracy is immune from responsibility to the people and in any case has confidence that the Chinese public will be on its side if it launches a major military operation against its main target, Taiwan.

But there are also lessons of caution to be learned from the Americans.

For the past year, the Taiwanese Navy has been working on the rapid deployment of cheap, domestically produced smart mines at sea; this is a potential bulwark against enemy blockades of ports and enemy occupation forces.

This is the type of asymmetric warfare that has so far frustrated the U.S. military in the Strait of Hormuz, prolonging a war that Trump promised would last a month or less.

Taiwan will also confront Beijing with political realities that military force cannot erase. About 90% of Taiwanese people oppose a Chinese takeover, and about 60% say they will resist it at all costs.

“China analysts are seeing two things at once,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They are impressed by U.S. military reach, precision, and operational capacity, but they also see a familiar pattern of American power striving to translate success on the battlefield into a lasting political outcome.”

Singleton said this is important for Taiwan: “Because China’s own military modernization It borrowed heavily from the American model, relying largely on joint operations, high-tech precision strikes, decapitation concepts, and information dominance.

“If the world’s most experienced military can still struggle to turn military pressure into political success,” he added, “Beijing needs to ask: [People’s Liberation Army] “We could have done better in a much more complex Taiwan scenario.”