By Jad Kabbanji
The United States’ lopsided conflict with China has long moved beyond simple trade wars to now focus on physical control of strategic flows. Recent months have seen much talk of competition over access to rare earth minerals, and now oil is back in the spotlight. This war of attrition over energy has one central objective: to restrict Beijing’s room for development.
In this context, the US-Israeli war against Iran is, among other things, a lever used to paralyze China’s vital supplies and weaken its industrial model.
Beijing’s energy triangle threatened
Oil is now a key factor in the global balance of power. China, the world’s largest importer of crude oil, has in recent years built its growth on energy partnerships with countries that refuse to bow to Washington’s authority. These relationships, based on non-dollarized trade, have become the primary target of US sanctions.
Three countries illustrate this dynamic, which could be called the triangle of Chinese energy sovereignty. Data from the International Energy Agency shows that Iran sent around 90 percent of its crude exports to China in 2024. Venezuela saw three-quarters of its exports go to Beijing before the recent regime change, while Russia has redirected nearly 50 percent of its flows to China since 2022, making Beijing and New Delhi its main buyers.
These flows were not developed out of charity, but out of market logic to circumvent US hegemony. For Beijing, this meant securing strategic supplies at very competitive prices: discounts of $5 to $12 per barrel for Russian crude, and $7 to $8 for Iranian and Venezuelan crude. This strategic advantage considerably strengthened Chinese industrial competitiveness while offering these three countries a lifeline in the face of suffocation by Washington.
But military escalation in the Middle East now threatens this fragile balance that Beijing patiently built.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its consequences
Since February 28, this strategic landscape has been abruptly overturned. Israeli and US strikes against Iran, which killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, triggered an immediate response from Tehran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards carried out their historic threat: the Strait of Hormuz – through which approximately 20 million barrels of oil, or nearly 20 percent of global consumption, pass daily – is now virtually paralyzed. The Gulf oil monarchies that are subservient to Washington are suffering from Iran’s retaliation and seeing their oil and gas facilities hit hard.
What’s more, the Guards have warned that any ship attempting to pass through the strait will be “burned alive,” with several tankers having already been targeted.
The consequences are immediate and measurable, with the markets reacting immediately. The cost of chartering a supertanker to transport oil from the Middle East to China has doubled compared to the period before the attacks, reaching record levels. The Brent crude benchmark price soared and briefly exceeding $115 per barrel, a threshold that had not been reached since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
For China, the loss of Iranian flows – which accounted for about 13 percent of its maritime imports, or 1.38 million barrels per day on average last year – is not just a question of volume. It is the loss of leverage over global prices and a supply route outside of US control. More than 40 percent of the crude oil purchased by China transits through the Strait of Hormuz, and the world’s major shipping companies are now avoiding this area due to the conflict.
While Tehran is the direct target, it is Beijing that is being aimed at.
The three fronts of the energy war against China
The longer this war drags on, the more pressure will be exerted on China. In the immediate term, Beijing can cushion the blow with its strategic reserves – around 900 million barrels, or just under three months of imports – but this buffer is only temporary. If the blockade of the strait continues, pressure will build through several mechanisms: soaring freight and insurance prices will permanently increase the cost of transporting all Middle Eastern crude oil; discounts on Iranian oil, which were a major competitive advantage for Chinese industry, are being phased out; and prolonged uncertainty over the security of maritime routes will force Beijing to constantly revise its supply plans, transforming a cyclical vulnerability into a systemic constraint.
But this isn’t the only threat. The prospect of a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, while seemingly desirable, holds a major pitfall for Beijing. Washington will inevitably seek to use any peace agreement to restore its influence over Moscow and normalize Russian energy flows to Europe, which would automatically reduce the share of Russian crude available to China on preferential terms. The competitive advantage afforded to Beijing since 2022 would be eroded – this wouldn’t be the result of a deliberate choice on Moscow’s part, but by the reorganization of markets imposed by US imperialism.
Washington is using two complementary levers: in the south, the war against Iran and the closure of Hormuz are stifling flows from the Gulf; in the west, the prospect of a negotiated peace in Ukraine is being exploited to divert part of Russia’s crude oil to Europe.
Venezuela, the third pillar of China’s energy strategy, is now effectively under Washington’s control. Like Tehran, Caracas is enduring a hybrid war in which economic sanctions, attempts at political destabilization and military interference are used to exert US domination. Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, once among the most efficient in the world, is now dilapidated because of a systematic blockade that prevents access to spare parts and foreign investment. Deprived of its energy sovereignty by decades of interference, the country is now reduced to the status of a semi-colony and cannot freely dispose of its resources or significantly increase its production.
Beijing is exploring ways to circumvent this multi-pronged offensive, including through supply agreements in yuan, accelerated development of the Arctic route, and strengthening of its strategic partnership with Pakistan to secure a land corridor. In addition, China has asked its refiners to suspend fuel exports in order to prioritize the domestic market, a sign of supply tensions. But these alternatives, which are costly and time-consuming to implement, cannot replace the Middle Eastern pillar of its energy security overnight, especially since 57 percent of China’s maritime imports still come from the Middle East.
Silk Roads, fragmentation and planned suffocation
What is revealed for all to see is a system that, in an effort to maintain itself, creates chaos to strangle China. By attacking Venezuela and Iran and maneuvering to neutralize Russia’s advantage, Washington is not seeking peace – instead, it looks to reorganize the flow of oil to its advantage.
Beyond the current conflagration, the US strategic objective for the Middle East is clearly emerging: the balkanization or, given the local context, the Lebanonization of nation states. This planned fragmentation aims to create permanent chaos through the lever of ethno-communal civil war. Recent events confirm a deliberate desire to destabilize Iran by stirring up the secessionist ambitions of its oppressed minorities, while deploying armed groups from among them – equipped and financed by Washington – to wage a ground war in addition to US-Israeli air strikes.
The aims behind fragmentation are not limited to weakening recalcitrant states. It also operates like a brake on the autonomous development of nations and, more specifically, is a major obstacle to China’s New Silk Roads project. Also called the Belt and Road Initiative, this project relies on massive investments in infrastructure and transcontinental trade. As such, it requires a stable geopolitical environment and strong nation states capable of guaranteeing the security of economic corridors and the sustainability of agreements.
This is inextricably linked to the energy issue – the Silk Roads are also oil and gas routes, and the stability they require is the very condition for the security of supply that underpins China’s industrial power. The permanent instillation of chaos in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere therefore has the collateral (but nevertheless desired) effect of countering China’s influence, weakening its partners and compromising the returns on investment of its infrastructure projects.
By fragmenting nations, US imperialism isn’t just closing trade routes. It is methodically suffocating Beijing’s access to strategic resources, whether through direct war (Iran), sanctions (Venezuela) or coercive diplomacy (Russia).
The spiral of war
This offensive isn’t limited to China. Cuba, which has been subjected to a criminal blockade for more than six decades, suffers the consequences of this economic war on a daily basis. Every barrel of oil that struggles to reach the island, every blackout that paralyzes it, is a direct consequence of the same logic that today seeks to destroy and massacre the Iranian people.
The power cuts in Havana and the strikes on Tehran come from the same hand – the hand of imperialism, which does not hesitate to starve entire populations to preserve its domination.
NATO, the armed wing of US-led imperialism camp, was among the first institutions to support the bombing campaign against the Iranian people. On March 2, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the offensive as “crucial” and welcomed the elimination of the Supreme Leader, stating that “we are all better off without him.”
Officially “uninvolved,” the military alliance nevertheless assumed the role of a logistical platform: without the French bases in Istres, without British reinforcements in Qatar, without the “facilitation” of European allies, the US campaign would not have been possible. The interception of a missile targeting Turkey served as a pretext for strengthening NATO’s defenses, transforming a war of aggression into a threat against which the Alliance must “protect” itself.
As it did in Yugoslavia and Libya, and as it is doing on Russia’s doorstep, NATO is once again acting as the cop of the world in the service of US interests, trampling on the sovereignty of nations and international law.
The case of Canada perfectly illustrates this contradiction and the pressure exerted on allies. On February 28, Prime Minister Carney gave his “unequivocal support” to the US strikes before acknowledging a few days later that he had supported them “with regret,” judging them to be potentially “contrary to international law.” Foreign Minister Anita Anand even had to delete messages referring to a “diplomatic solution,” a sign of internal tensions.
When asked on March 5 about Canada’s possible military involvement, Carney refused to rule it out, saying that this country would stand “shoulder to shoulder with its allies” if necessary. Behind the scenes a Liberal MP speaking on condition of anonymity expressed his fear that Washington would invoke NATO Article 5 (the mutual clause) to drag Ottawa into an unwanted conflict. This mixture of overt support, discreet regrets and powerlessness sums up the position of Washington’s allies – willing hostages to an imperialist strategy that they ultimately endorse.
The war of aggression against Iran that has set the Middle East ablaze, the tightening noose around China, and the reinforced blockade against Cuba form a coherent whole. By turning hunger and energy into weapons of war, methodically destabilizing entire regions, and multiplying threats and coups d’état, US imperialism is plunging humanity into the abyss.
The threat of a third world war is no longer an alarmist prophecy – every day, it becomes a little more our present, and we are called to act now.
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