Subject: Re: Dear MAGA, thank you for the foreign wars!
Instead of having an active proxy causing trouble for the west in Iran, China is now the one that has to spend energy restoring their mischief-making ability to what it was knowing that US and the Gulf nations aren't willing to allow Iran to threaten them anymore.

You've missed the significance of Iran randomly bombing its neighbors and how honked off they are. Think any of them are going to object if the US says, "Hey, we've noticed Iran is rebuilding a missile factory. Mind if we blow it up?" NONE of them are going to say no.

China doesn't want them to be making mischief. China wants their oil, and they want oil from Saudi and Kuwait and UAE and all the other Gulf States. They have an economic and diplomatic interest in having a strong alliance with Iran, not a security interest. That's Russia.

That's the significance that you're missing. As long as Iran remains: i) hostile to the West; ii) economically locked into relations with China, then China's absolutely golden.

Wrong. You seem to think that the only way to eliminate an enemy is to completely change them over. There's such a concept as a "mission kill" whereupon you eliminate someone's ability to do the job they were doing. That's what you missed in Venezuela and that's what you're missing now.

We don't need to change Iran into an ally; we just need them to stop projecting power on China's behalf.

Again, China doesn't want or need Iran to "project power" in the region. Russia does and did, because the Black Sea and Eastern Med have huge strategic importance for Russia. China just wants the oil to flow, and for Iran to be economically dependent on them, so that they have the energy security and diplomatic support.

To borrow your terminology, we've failed at the "mission kill" - because we haven't eliminated Teheran's ability to do the job they were doing. Because the job Iran has been doing for China has been economic and diplomatic, not military.

Yeah? And? This point has nothing to do with the article. The Saudis are happy to sell the Chinese all the oil they want...and they do. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. But the Saudis will also understand that if China starts screwing with world trade that they get a vote in the form of sanctions against the Chinese, a vote that Tehran as China's b1tch would never allow.

Right - and that hasn't changed. Tehran is still going to be China's b1tch. We're not going to change that. So what did we gain? Iran's still going to be as firmly in China's corner as they were before, they're still going to fulfill all of the functions that China wanted and asked of them (supplying energy and being a diplomatic "b1tch" and being a customer of Chinese goods and investment). Even moreso.

Unfortunately, it's an opinion that merely looks at the world through the small lens of US democrat party politics instead of the broader one of worldwide strategic deterrence.

It has nothing to do with party politics, and is entirely about worldwide strategic deterrence. Iran was of minimal military importance to China; they're important for economics, energy security, and diplomatic cooperation. We've accomplished nothing in terms of materially affecting China's interests in the Middle East, while diminishing our own strategic deterrence in the short and intermediate term.

This isn't some brilliant move in worldwide strategic deterrence. It's the U.S. wasting its resources in the Middle East to accomplish very little in the way of any lasting goals. What limited goals we are able to achieve (like setting back Iran's nuclear program, though that was ostensibly already completely destroyed six months ago) have no material impact on China's global strategy. All of this stuff you're posting is just trying to rationalize it by pretending that China got some material strategic value from Iran's conventional military strength....which it just didn't. China's main benefit from the region was energy security and diplomatic support, and we've just guaranteed that Tehran will be more reliant on China than Russia for at least a generation, since Russia won't be able to help them in their time of need and China will. Heckuva job, Trumpie!