The question of whether America is fighting Israel’s war is perhaps the least interesting one. Strip away the noise, and a more consequential picture emerges. The United States has used overwhelming force to dismantle what had quietly become the most significant Chinese forward position outside East Asia.
Over the past half-decade, Tehran transformed itself from a regional irritant into a structural component of Chinese strategic architecture. Roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s crude exports flowed to Chinese refineries operating beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement. That revenue funded approximately a quarter of the Iranian state budget, including the military forces that Washington now considers a direct threat. China, for its part, was not being philanthropic. Cheap Iranian crude helped Beijing accumulate a strategic petroleum reserve reportedly exceeding a billion barrels – enough to sustain the Chinese economy for roughly a hundred days in the event of a Pacific naval blockade. Iran was a hedge against American sea power, and a lucrative one at that.
Her picture may be plastered all over the lobby and hallways of her apartment building in Mississauga, but there have been no signs of Mezhgan Aini for four years.
