Why the US–China Summit may decide the Middle East’s next war |
There are moments in international politics when geography becomes destiny. The Strait of Hormuz—barely 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point—is once again one of those places. Nearly 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes through that narrow artery every day, carrying not just energy, but the fragile assumptions of global order. Today, it is no longer merely a shipping lane. It is the stage upon which the United States, China, Iran, Israel, and the Gulf monarchies are performing a dangerous new act of strategic theatre.
The recent US–China summit, overshadowed by Donald Trump’s provocative diplomacy toward Iran, revealed something deeper than another round of transactional great-power bargaining.
It exposed the quiet collapse of the old American-led Middle East order and the emergence of a far more unstable system—one where China hedges, Gulf states improvise, Israel escalates, and Washington increasingly confuses coercion with strategy.
It exposed the quiet collapse of the old American-led Middle East order and the emergence of a far more unstable system—one where China hedges, Gulf states improvise, Israel escalates, and Washington increasingly confuses coercion with strategy.
Trump returned from Beijing claiming President Xi Jinping agreed that ‘the straits must remain open’, presenting it as proof that even China backs Washington’s pressure campaign against Tehran. Simultaneously, he insisted the United States did not need China’s help at all to reopen Hormuz if necessary. This contradiction was not a rhetorical accident. It was coercive diplomacy in its purest—and most dangerous—form: the carrot of implied great-power consensus paired with the stick of military threat.
Yet coercive diplomacy depends on credibility, and credibility is precisely where Washington now struggles most. Tehran has watched the United States abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, shift red lines overnight, and turn ceasefire proposals into political theatre.
Yet coercive diplomacy depends on credibility, and credibility is precisely where Washington now struggles most. Tehran has watched the United States abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, shift red lines overnight, and turn ceasefire proposals into political theatre.
Analysts warn that Iran increasingly sees not American strength, but an American ‘credibility deficit’ — a superpower able to launch strikes, but unable........