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U.S.-China And The Four Week Time-frame For The War On Iran
The war on Iran is waging on – and will continue do to so for a while. Tehran gets bombed to smithereens, the hydrocarbon infrastructure in the Gulf is shutting down or gets damaged, the economic pressure on the global economy is starting to show.
Neither effect answers the question of why the U.S. did decide to attack Iran. U.S. President Trump has give about a dozen different reasons none of which holds up to scrutiny. Iran wasn’t making nukes, didn’t build intercontinental missiles and had no intend to attack anyone. Its internal situation was and is stable.
Since the mid 1980s the Zionists have tried to push the U.S. into war with Iran. All the time the U.S. did not submit to their pressure for good reasons. To suggest that this pressure is now at the root of the conflict is too perfunctory. As are suggestions that the current Russiagate scandal, aka the Epstein files, has anything to do with it.
The empire is not a joke. It acts for strategic reasons.
One has to zoom out from those narrow views to make sense. Andrew Korybko is onto something when he claims that this campaign is Part Of Trump’s Grand Strategy Against China:
The goal is to obtain proxy control over Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves so that they can be weaponized as leverage against China for coercing it into a lopsided trade deal that would derail its superpower rise and therefore restore US-led unipolarity.
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That’s the brainchild of Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and it was expanded on in this analysis here from early January. As was written, “US influence over Venezuela’s and possibly soon Iran’s and Nigeria’s energy exports and trade ties with China could be weaponized via threats of curtailment or cut-offs in parallel with pressure upon its Gulf allies to do the same in pursuit of this goal”, which is to coerce China into indefinite junior partnership status vis-à-vis the US through a lopsided trade deal.
China is well aware of that the U.S. strategy is aimed against it. It is one reason why it is giving technical and military support to Iran, mostly in the form of intelligence, while avoiding to get directly involved in the conflict:
Intelligence reports on February 27, 2026, indicated that China sent “loitering munitions” (kamikaze drones) and air defense systems to Iran shortly before the attack began. Along with China supplying Iran with missile programs, negotiations continued between Beijing and Tehran to supply Iran with CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles, a technology that is difficult to intercept and is considered a game-changer in the region. Along with providing cybersecurity to Iran, China began in January 2026 a strategy to support Iranian digital sovereignty by replacing Western software with closed Chinese systems to protect against Israeli and American cyberattacks. With China rebuilding Iran’s missile capabilities, China contributed to compensating for Iran’s weapons losses following the 2025 attacks, including the provision of advanced ballistic missiles.
A loss of Iran would cause significant damage for China’s energy position as its dependence on Gulf sources for oil and gas is still significant. It has been hedging that position by making new energy deals with Russia:
On the one hand, China takes into account the increased regional risks in West Asia. According to some reports, the rise of Beijing’s interest in [the Power of Siberia Pipeline 2] was triggered by the Iran–Israel war in June. As concerns arose about the reliability of energy supplies from Gulf Arab states, Beijing decided to consider alternatives—a step that fits into its overall strategy of minimizing external risks to energy security.
On the other hand, as an economic confrontation with the US is unfolding, China seeks less dependence on hydrocarbon supplies from close partners of Washington while also actively reducing oil and gas imports from American suppliers. In this regard, expanded purchases of Russian energy is a useful hedging strategy.
In light of this it is interesting that Trump today set the length for his war on Iran to four weeks:
“We’re already substantially ahead out of our time projections,” Trump said. “But whatever the time is, it’s okay. Whatever it takes…Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that.”
Trump will visit China four weeks from now – from March 31 to April 2. His position towards China was weakened when the Supreme Court recently buried his tariff edicts. Being bogged down in Iran would further weaken his position.
But coming to China while having won concessions from Iran would be bonus for Trump. He could claim that the U.S. is able to forcibly change governments, in Iran and Venezuela, who supply energy to Beijing. A victory in Iran would put Trump into a good negotiation positions.
China, on the other side, will want to avoid a loss of Iran. Its interest is to see the U.S. bogged down in the Middle East and with its arsenals empty. Everyone and everything that helps to that will be in Beijing’s favor.
The time horizon of four week thus matters. It is the time frame in which Trump has to win. It is the time frame which Iran needs to sustain to come out as a (nominal) winner.
The four weeks are to be kept in mind when and analyzing the procession of this uneven fight.
The West’s Iran War Strategy Is Built on a Fantasy About China
Let’s not mince words.
The United States just bombed Tehran to smithereens. The stated reason? Iran’s oil. Iran’s energy leverage. Iran’s place in the global hydrocarbon order.
The unstated reason? China.
Western strategists have been clear about this for months. Take Iran’s oil off the table. Disrupt Gulf supplies. Hold a gun to China’s energy jugular. Then force Beijing into a lopsided trade deal that derails its superpower rise.
This is the plan.
It is a textbook example of fighting the last war.
I am in China. I see what they do not.
A few weeks ago I was in Bangkok. The city was deafening. Gasoline engines everywhere—cars, trucks, scooters, even lawn tools. The noise of the 20th century, still roaring.
Then I came home to China.
Quiet. Peaceful. Electric.
Not some green utopia. Strategic reality.
Walk through any Chinese city today. Half the new cars are EVs. The buses are electric. The scooters that move millions of workers every day—electric. The delivery vans, the taxis, the municipal fleets—increasingly electric.
The West still imagines China as a giant version of Bangkok. A civilization choking on gasoline, vulnerable to any disruption in supply.
They have not been here. They do not hear what I hear.
Silence.
Let me state this categorically: China needs oil, but not the way the West thinks.
Yes, we need oil for:
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Plastics. Petrochemicals. Synthetic fibers.
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Asphalt for roads.
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Lubricants for industry.
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Aviation fuel—the one sector that remains hard to electrify.
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The military.
But for transportation? For heating? For the daily energy needs of 1.4 billion people?
That battle is already over. And oil lost.
The West’s entire Iran strategy assumes that cutting off Gulf oil creates an existential crisis for China. That Beijing will buckle. That Trump can arrive in Beijing next week with a victory in hand and dictate terms.
This is not strategy. This is hallucination.
Let me give you the numbers they ignore.
China has spent twenty years building the world’s largest strategic petroleum reserve. Not for show. For exactly this moment.
We have diversified supply chains that would make a Pentagon planner weep with envy: Russia overland pipelines, Central Asian connections, African and Latin American equity oil that Chinese companies own directly.
We have domestic coal-to-liquids capacity—expensive, inefficient, but real. A emergency option that exists.
And most importantly: every electric vehicle sold, every bus that runs on batteries, every scooter that doesn’t burn gasoline is a barrel of oil that can never be weaponized against us.
The West sees China’s oil imports and assumes dependence.
They do not see the internal transformation that has already happened.
They do not hear the quiet.
Trump has set a four-week timeline.
He will arrive in China on March 31. He wants to come as a victor—Iran bombed into submission, Gulf oil under US shadow, Beijing forced to negotiate from weakness.
This is the fantasy.
Here is the reality: even if every barrel from the Gulf stopped tomorrow, China does not collapse. The economy does not grind to a halt. Cities do not freeze.
We draw from reserves. We shift to alternative suppliers. We ration non-essential uses. We accelerate every trend that reduces oil dependence further.
Is this painless? No.
Is it existential collapse? Absolutely not.
The window for oil as a strategic weapon against China closed years ago. The West just didn’t notice.
We have entered a new epoch.
The old rules assumed that control of energy flows meant control of industrial civilization. That assumption shaped every major war of the 20th century. It shaped American strategy from the 1973 oil crisis through the Gulf War through the endless Middle East entanglements.
That era is over.
China did not defeat the oil weapon by conquering oil fields. We defeated it by making oil less relevant. Not through magic. Through deliberate, sustained, strategic investment in a different energy future.
The West’s Iran war is a monument to the old thinking. A desperate attempt to wield a weapon that no longer works against a target that no longer exists.
Trump will come to Beijing in four weeks expecting leverage.
He will find a civilization that has already solved the problem his strategy depends on.
Welcome to 2026. Welcome to the post-oil era of great power competition.
The quiet you hear? That’s the future. And it’s already here.
Posted by: Rufus Arrr | Mar 3 2026 12:56 utc | 804
@843 Saint Jimmy (and a previous post similar)
In the region, there has been forty or so years to build understanding, prosperity and peace.
The opposite has been enacted, for profit and position.
How this ties into world order, China and Russia for example, or international economy, is very complex, is not obvious or as first appears.
In fact, you will have factions backing every eventuality possible, and of course us ordinary people, are and will be forced to accept and adapt to whatever outcome.
The US to my view, is interested in wealth and superiority, of occupying a position of control or pseudo ownership, aka hegemony.
Its excess, one displayed by various countries at times, is to place a choice of disorder or its order. In reality neither is obligatory, there are much more subtle ways to manage differences, if chosen.
Antagonisms exist always, they can be overcome in various ways, or used to escalate.
Old saying : “Getting to the top is easy, it is staying there that is difficult”
Power can be managed to the benefit of all, or it can be misused or become an empty ambition of its own.
@ UW re previous comment somewhere
Aoun was elected and government formed after concession to that by Hezballah. It was seen as a weakness of Hezballah at the time by some, pragmatic by others, and others allege the resulting government did not keep its promises.
Missed most comments since yesterday.
Posted by: Ornot | Mar 3 2026 13:22 utc | 818
– Entity evacuation orders for southern Lebanon, bombings in Beirut, ground maneouver.
– India starts restricting energy usage.
“Major General Jamil Al-Sayyid, former Director General of Lebanese General Security:
If what the media published about what happened yesterday in the Council of Ministers is true, the hidden will have been revealed and the masks have fallen.
Is the fate of our state in “protecting” Lebanon to be like the fate of Mahmoud Abbas:
They gave him the title of “President”, played him the role of the occupation’s supervisor, and gave him the illusion of international support, so Palestine disappeared forever!
In Lebanon today there is a crowd of waiters…” Youssef Fares
– Large combined attack on Iran projected.
– Continued retaliation by Iran throughout the region.
For up to date more reliable coverage these need no Telegram account for preview linked, but need translate for those not reading Arabic (if page translate fails, Babel browser or Firefox Immersive Translate extension work):
https://t.me/s/Sohaibpress
for close concise coverage.
https://t.me/s/Military_Security
for local analysis.
https://t.me/s/youseffares19
from Palestine and with attention to Iran.
Posted by: Ornot | Mar 3 2026 13:58 utc | 841
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