Given the superpower rivalry between the United States and China, any U.S. administration’s decision to go to war should be guided by an assessment about whether it strengthens the U.S. position relative to China. During the Cold War, the United States fought the Korean and Vietnam wars to counter Soviet influence, and it forced the British and French to pull back their troops during the 1956 Suez Crisis to avoid Soviet intervention.

Hence, the United States’ massive air war—perhaps followed by a ground campaign—against Iran is an obvious case where one would expect the China calculus to play a major role. In fact, the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy highlights the U.S.-China rivalry, emphasizing the importance of balancing China in Asia and denying it access to the Western Hemisphere. Various analysts and strategists have put the Iran war in the context of pushing back against China by denying it its regional partners.

Given the superpower rivalry between the United States and China, any U.S. administration’s decision to go to war should be guided by an assessment about whether it strengthens the U.S. position relative to China. During the Cold War, the United States fought the Korean and Vietnam wars to counter Soviet influence, and it forced the British and French to pull back their troops during the 1956 Suez Crisis to avoid Soviet intervention.

Hence, the United States’ massive air war—perhaps followed by a ground campaign—against Iran is an obvious case where one would expect the China calculus to play a major role. In fact, the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy highlights the U.S.-China rivalry, emphasizing the importance of balancing China in Asia and denying it access to the Western Hemisphere. Various analysts and strategists have put the Iran war in the context of pushing back against China by denying it its regional partners.

But it is difficult to see how Operation Epic Fury enhances the U.S. position relative to China.

In fact, it is precisely China’s lack of military presence in the greater Middle East that has lured the United States into war. A similar U.S. attack on Iran would not have been possible during the Cold War, because Washington was then worried about a Soviet military response targeting U.S. interests in the region. Washington does not have any such concerns with regards to China in the Middle East, given Beijing’s limited military power outside the Western Pacific. However, if Washington engages in conflicts in the Middle East or other parts of Eurasia that lie on the geopolitical periphery of the U.S.-China rivalry, it risks strategic overreach and could damage its relationships with allies and partners.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s war on Iran could hypothetically strengthen the U.S. position by replacing the China-friendly regime in Tehran, thereby weakening an important Chinese partner and disrupting China’s oil supply. The overwhelming show of U.S. military force could in theory also deter China from invading Taiwan. In reality, however, none of these arguments has much merit.

First, the history of the Cold War informs us that the United States may use regime change in third countries as a tool to undermine its superpower rival; Iran’s supreme leader and other prominent members of the top leadership were indeed killed in the early phase of the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. Nevertheless, Iran’s theocratic regime remains intact, suggesting that the bombing campaign may be insufficient to bring down the regime, assuming that is indeed the United States’ goal. It appears unlikely that the Trump administration is following an overarching strategy to remove China-friendly regimes. Even if the Iranian regime were to collapse, there would be no guarantee that a new government in Tehran—whether more liberal-minded or more radical—would stop working with Beijing. After all, China is Iran’s largest trading partner, and as the world’s largest importer of oil and gas, it is likely to dominate Iranian oil exports in the future, too.

Second, the U.S. air attacks have weakened Iran’s military capabilities, thereby reducing its ability to meddle in Middle East politics. However, concerns that Beijing is leading an axis of evil or an axis of autocracy with Iran as a key member are exaggerated. While it is convenient for China that Iran keeps the United States occupied in the Middle East, just as Russia does by diverting U.S. resources to Europe, Beijing is in no position to dictate Tehran’s or Moscow’s policies toward the United States. Furthermore, despite cultivating strong ties with Iran and developing bilateral defense cooperation, China actually seeks a balance of relationships with a number of countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Israel. Beijing’s main interests in the region are stability and economic cooperation. In fact, China opposes Iran Iran’s pursuit pursuitof nuclear weapons for the very reason that it may create regional instability and give the United States and Israel an excuse to attack Iran.

Third, given that more than 70 percent of China’s oil consumption is based on imports and almost half of its crude oil imports originate in the Middle East, the U.S. war with Iran obviously hurts China by disrupting its oil supply. Nevertheless, Beijing has no reason to panic. An international oil crisis like the one unfolding right now is exactly what Beijing has prepared for and factored into its energy security policy. In addition to its own domestic oil production, China has built up substantial crude stockpiles, increasing them massively in 2025 amid global oversupply and low oil prices. Furthermore, it has minimized risk by diversifying its import sources. Several of China’s main sources of imported crude are located outside the Middle East, including Russia and Brazil. On top of this, the Chinese leadership has emphasized a more balanced energy mix consisting of oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and renewables.

Moreover, the oil crisis set off by Trump’s war in Iran is hurting the U.S. economy, which is heavily exposed to the global oil price, as well as the economies of U.S. allies, including Japan, South Korea, and NATO partners. The fact that Trump asked China to help end Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz suggests that diminishing Chinese influence is not a factor in his calculus for waging this war.

Fourth, the Chinese leadership and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are naturally following the United States’ display of military power with great interest and even envy. The U.S. military—particularly its technology and experience in large-scale, complex, multi-domain operations—remains more advanced than China’s. U.S. air strikes in Iran reportedly incorporate artificial intelligence on an unprecedented scale. That said, the war will prompt China to rethink its military affairs in a similar way that the first Gulf War in 1991 did. But if the vast technology gap between the PLA and what the U.S. military showcased in 1991 shocked Beijing, there is no such gap today. On the contrary, China is now increasingly confident in its own military power, and Beijing knows that it would have the home advantage in a war with the United States in Asia. Indeed, fighting a high-intensity war with the PLA in China’s neighborhood would be entirely different from any armed conflict the United States has been involved in. It would certainly represent challenges on a different scale to dropping bombs over Iran.

China’s muted response to the U.S. war in Iran comes as no surprise. Beijing has no security obligations toward Tehran. More importantly, it has no permanent military presence in the region that would make any difference in the war. While China could theoretically deploy one of its aircraft carrier groups to the region to protect its oil tankers, this would be a risky move. Beijing has no interest in becoming embroiled in a U.S. war in the Middle East, and there are good reasons to question the PLA’s readiness to undertake such a large-scale mission far from its home waters. Yet this should not be interpreted as a sign of Chinese weakness. China’s cautious approach to the ongoing debacle in the Middle East is simply a consequence of the geopolitical dynamics of the U.S.-China rivalry.

During the Cold War, the Soviet bloc’s vast geographic reach from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean meant that Moscow represented a direct threat to U.S. interests in multiple regions of Eurasia—including Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. China, however, controls a much more limited landmass. Lacking significant overseas military bases, Beijing’s military reach is largely confined to the Western Pacific. In other words, China’s geographical situation creates an intense rivalry with the United States in East Asia but does not support intense confrontation in other regions. That contrasts with the multi-theater U.S.-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War.

The strong presence of U.S. and allied forces along China’s first island chain further concentrates the rivalry in a single central region and decreases the likelihood of superpower confrontation in the periphery. All this forces Beijing to design a military strategy that is narrowly focused on East Asia.

In contrast, the United States’ geography enables easy access to the world’s oceans. The absence of substantial Chinese military forces anywhere beyond the East Asian theater may thus tempt the United States to engage in conflicts in secondary theaters that are peripheral to its rivalry with China. China’s status as a superpower without a global military footprint challenges U.S. strategic clarity and restraint in ways that differ from the Cold War and U.S. unipolar era.

The ability—and hence the temptation—to flex its muscles beyond China’s regional sphere of influence carries two risks for the United States.

The first risk is strategic overreach. Becoming entangled in one or more drawn-out wars that are peripheral to its rivalry with China will drain economic and military resources away from the United States’ main strategic priority of balancing China. The U.S. war in Iran arguably has the potential to be exactly that, especially if the conflict drags on and Washington commits ground troops. Furthermore, at some point in the future, China may exploit U.S. distractions elsewhere as an opportunity to advance its own interests in East Asia, including with an invasion of Taiwan.

Another risk is that the prolonged use of force in secondary theaters could seriously damage Washington’s relationships with key allies and partners. Already, the U.S. war in Iran is an example of this dynamic. It moves U.S. focus away from the Russia-Ukraine war, which is more important for the United Sates’ long-term interests due to the growing Moscow-Beijing relationship, and Trump’s war on Iran is already deepening the trans-Atlantic rift. When Trump realized that his war was not going as he planned, he asked NATO allies for assistance—but was told by a number of European leaders that this is not NATO’s war. He responded by accusing NATO of making a foolish mistake by not supporting him, indicating that he may not come to NATO’s rescue when the other members need U.S. assistance.

Any potential leverage that the United States might gain over China by going to war in Iran is clearly offset by the risk of strategic overreach and the growing trans-Atlantic rift. If the war is as peripheral to the U.S.-China rivalry as we’ve seen, then it raises serious questions about what kind of rationale drives Washington—about war in Iran, its strategy toward China, and where it might use force the next time.