Summary
The media are fully convinced that the best way for the United States to confront China and Iran is simply to do whatever they want.President Donald Trump has been confronting both countries for two terms. And yet, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post, somehow China and Iran have the upper hand.That’s a weird thing to say. Iran does not have a leadership class. They are all dead. Iran does not have forward military capacity. It’s been destroyed. Iran does not have a navy. They’re at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz. They don’t have an air force. They can’t fly anything but low-level drones.Iran doesn’t have a functioning economy, but somehow, Iran is winning?Meanwhile, China, which has a massive debt problem, a massive demographic problem, and serious military issues — its military is wildly inferior to that of the United States — is also winning?According to these media outlets, the best strategy is to make nice with the Chinese, to hug them, to give them everything they could possibly want; to go to the Iranians and cut a deal where we free up billions of dollars so they can rebuild their entire military machine.I’m not sure what else you’re supposed to gain from news analysis from The New York Times that says Iran gained leverage in the war, or this from The Washington Post: “China gains major edge on U.S. amid Iran war, intelligence report finds.”China has no oil. It receives a majority of its oil from the Strait of Hormuz, which is closed. How is China trying to become magically stronger in some way? Iran has nothing functional in it. Yet somehow they are magically winning.The media’s perspective is that China and Iran have gained leverage.The Times reports, “Nearly three months into the conflict, the Iranian regime has succeeded in confounding U.S. and Israeli expectations for a speedy victory.”Of course, all of this depends on your definition of victory. We have not had a victory on planet Earth in which one side gets on the deck of an aircraft carrier and signs a surrender document for roughly 80 years.If by victory over the U.S. you mean Iran has no top-level military, their government is barely holding on to power, their economy is nonfunctional, and that they are, in desultory fashion, firing drones at shipping — that’s a pretty narrow definition of victory.The Times writes: “The regime survived a wave of targeted killings early in the war. It then managed to turn the tables on its more powerful adversaries, introducing something of a stalemate. Since mid-March, Iran has maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway crucial to the world’s oil and gas trade. It has been able to limit U.S. and Israeli strikes on its energy industry. It even got President Donald Trump to rein in Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militia.”Most of these points are false. If Iran maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz, they would be able to ship their own oil out; they would be able to toll ships that were traveling.They can’t.Sure, President Trump is concerned about the spike in oil prices that would accompany an Iranian counter-fire against the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. But as far as limiting U.S. and Israeli attacks on its energy industry, President Trump is not sure that he wants to do that, because he is not sure that he wants to destroy the lifeline of a future Iranian regime if they were too moderate. He’s concerned that hurting the energy supplies in Iran would hurt the Iranian people.As far as the war in Lebanon, the Israelis are still pursuing military action in Lebanon, and they’re likely to pursue it further as time goes on because Hezbollah is not giving up the ghost.Nonetheless, The New York Times did find “experts” to explain that Iran is winning. Nicole Grajewski, who teaches at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in France, said, “Iran definitely has the advantage here. The U.S. is just kind of flailing at the moment.”In what sense do they have an advantage?The idea here is that Iran is pressuring the UAE and Qatar, except the UAE wants the United States to go even further. Saudi Arabia may be lobbying the United States not to go further, but that’s only because the United States has not evidenced a willingness to go all the way. If the United States were to say to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, “We’re toppling the regime,” both of those states would be onside, but they don’t want half-measures.Thus, the pressure is not on the United States in the sense that America is about to be damaged; the pressure is on Iran regarding whether the regime lasts.Iran’s strategy, according to The New York Times, of targeting oil fields and surrounding countries, “has shifted much of the focus of the war to the crucial question of how to get the strait reopened — and how to limit Iranian leverage over it in the future. Efforts to pressure Iran to reopen the crucial waterway have proved unsuccessful.”There are options that President Trump does not want to use, but he certainly could. Nonetheless, according to the New York Times, “Iran, though deeply damaged by the war, is likely to emerge from it with a valuable new asset” — I assume this means shutting down the shipping in the Strait — “having at least partial control over the strait would not only be a source of revenue for the regime, but also a form of geopolitical strength.”They could have done that before. That’s the whole point. Do you want a regime that could have shut the Strait at any point to have a ballistic missile umbrella and nuclear weapons?The answer is no.It is yet to be seen how the war ends, but to suggest that Iran is somehow stronger now than they were before the war is crazy.They just did something that they had to do because they were basically on their last legs if they had not shut the Strait of Hormuz. That was their last point of leverage, which, by the way, puts them at odds with China, which needs that oil. If they had not closed the Strait of Hormuz, and if it were to reopen without their economy reopening, they would be in very, very serious trouble.How about China? The Washington Post is trying to claim that China is benefiting from all this, which is hard to see since their economic growth has slowed and they’ve been relegated to stealing our tech.Nonetheless, according to The Washington Post, “A confidential U.S. intelligence analysis details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the United States across military, economic, diplomatic, and other fields … The assessment, the officials said, was produced this week for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, and has raised alarm within the Pentagon about the geopolitical cost of Washington’s standoff with Tehran.”We should be very clear. There are many intelligence reports presented to the military, so we don’t know how important this one was. Was it sort of a consensus? Unclear.“Officials talked about the finding,” the Post continued. “China has sold weapons to Persian Gulf allies of the United States… Beijing has also assisted countries around the world struggling to meet their energy needs.”That would be weird given that Beijing does not have access to oil and natural gas.The reality is that the United States has become the chief exporter of oil and natural gas on Earth, thanks to developments in the Strait of Hormuz. You can see graphics showing the large number of ships leaving American shores with American LNG.According to the Washington Post, “The war has also drained the U.S. with massive stocks of munitions that would be critical in a potential standoff with China over the fate of Taiwan. The Iran conflict … has allowed Beijing to observe how the U.S. fights war and learn how to plan its own future operations.”Beijing would have learned that in any conflict anyway. As far as munitions stocks being short, the reality is that’s why we need to ramp it up. We should have been ramping it up beforehand. The fact that Joe Biden didn’t ramp it up, the fact that Barack Obama slashed our military by leaps and bounds, did not help.“The report notes that Beijing has incorporated popular criticisms of the war into public messaging,” the Post writes.Of course that’s true, but none of this is a surprise. China trying to take advantage of an international conflict is not a gigantic shock. But the notion that China is somehow better off when it can’t import oil from Iran or Qatar or UAE or Saudi Arabia, how?This doesn’t mean China doesn’t have counter moves. Any country worth its salt has counter moves. The question is, are they better off now or were they better off five months ago? And the answer is China was a lot better off five months ago.But don’t worry, you can always find an expert. Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security — a left-wing think tank — says, “On balance, the war in Iran is massively improving China’s geopolitical position.”I have doubts that that is the case.Nonetheless, there are people who are trying to pretend that Beijing is doing well, that Beijing is actually somehow making common cause with Japan and South Korea and Australia.I don’t think so.People who don’t like Trump are claiming that China is going to step in and win the moral party arguments.I have a hard time believing that unless you’re an idiot.Stokes says, “China has an opening to portray the United States as an aggressive, unilateralist power in decline because Washington cannot stop itself from getting embroiled in a bloody and costly Middle East wars.”First, this is not a particularly bloody nor particularly costly Middle East war. Second, if you want to believe a Chinese attempt to portray us as an aggressive unilateralist power while they threaten Taiwan, eat Hong Kong, threaten Japan, and build bases in the middle of the ocean to attack the Philippines, you are simply stupid.If you’re the kind of person who wants to believe that…