Rubio says Iran-backed militias pilfer Iraqi resources for Tehran

The current state of China–Iran relations is unusually difficult to assess. Both governments continue to affirm their “strategic partnership,” but beyond the rhetoric the reality is less clear.

On paper, the two countries are bound by a 25-year cooperation agreement signed in 2021, covering trade, infrastructure, energy and security.

Yet China has remained notably cautious during Iran’s recent crises. Despite being Tehran’s largest oil customer and a key diplomatic partner, Beijing largely stayed on the sidelines as Israeli strikes hit Iranian territory.

In practice, the partnership operates within strict limits. While Sino-Iranian economic relations have been stagnating, China’s ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have expanded dramatically.

Expectations meet caution

During the 12-day confrontation with Israel, some Chinese analysts urged a more proactive role—mediation, public condemnation of Israeli strikes or closer military cooperation.

But Beijing did little, triggering accusations in Tehran that it failed to grasp the Islamic Republic’s strategic value in its rivalry with the United States.

China should have done more, many asserted, rarely elaborating on what that more could look like.

Direct military or political backing, however, would have risked confrontation with Washington and jeopardized China’s broader regional network.

Oil as quiet support

Where China’s support has been most tangible is in energy trade. The world's top importer of oil is Iran's main, almost sole, customer.

Despite sanctions, imports of Iranian crude have continued to grow in 2025, with tankers often re-flagged or disguised to evade detection. This provides Tehran with a crucial lifeline.

For Beijing, the motive is less political than practical: discounted Iranian oil fits its strategy of stockpiling reserves and securing cheap energy while global prices remain low.

Dependence by default

With UN sanctions back in force, Iran faces renewed isolation from global finance, trade, and technology. That leaves Tehran even more dependent on a handful of partners—above all, China.

A recent review of Iranian media published by the ChinaMed Project confirms this.Iran’s leaders—or at least parts of the elite—prize strategic autonomy and resent reliance on any single power, yet options are scarce.

Russia, itself sanctioned and weakened, offers little beyond rhetoric. China, by contrast, provides trade, energy purchases, and a degree of diplomatic cover, making it Iran’s indispensable partner whether Tehran likes it or not.

The trajectory of Iran-Saudi relations will be decisive. If détente holds, Tehran may find limited room to maneuver; if it collapses, dependence on Beijing will only deepen.

Looking ahead

The return of UN sanctions on Iran coincides with Donald Trump’s unveiling of a new peace plan.

Beijing’s official line is that it “welcomes all efforts” toward peace based on a two-state solution. Chinese experts, however, are skeptical, arguing that peace will be impossible without recognizing Palestinian statehood—a position long enshrined in Chinese diplomacy.

Many Chinese commentators also see Trump’s plan as a US bid to reassert dominance, protect Israel’s interests, and strengthen Arab-Israeli ties.

Beijing opposes none of these in principle, but grows wary when they appear designed to isolate Tehran further, potentially undermining China’s own mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing’s challenge is to sustain its balancing act: maintaining economic ties with Tehran, preserving partnerships with Iran’s Arab neighbors, and avoiding direct confrontation with Washington.

For Tehran, choices are narrowing. The more isolated it becomes, the more it must rely on China, even if that means accepting a subordinate position in the relationship.

China’s support for Iran remains significant but measured, rooted more in calculation than ideology. As sanctions bite and isolation deepens, Beijing’s role may grow—but within limits that protect China’s own interests above all.

"(US President Donald Trump) actually wants Iran to be prosperous. He wants to have good relations with the Iranians, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon," Vance told reporters while visiting Jerusalem in a bid to shore up a Gaza ceasefire.

"So we're going to keep on using and exhausting every diplomatic means possible to try to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. That's our focus, and that will remain our focus for the indefinite future," he added.

Trump has repeatedly said June 22 US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites "obliterated" the program and the Iran is more focused on survival than rebuilding its capabilities.

Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons and called the attacks illegal.

Raising some eyebrows, the US President told the Israeli Knesset last week that it would be ideal if Tehran could be folded into a broader Middle East peace deal. Still, he has often mooted bombing Iran again if it seeks to rebuild its nuclear program.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared to rule out any renewed talks with Tehran in a rare speech earlier on Monday, calling Trump's assertions on crippling its nuclear sites "nonsense" and telling Trump to "keep dreaming."

“(Trump) claims to be a man of deals, but if a deal is accompanied by coercion and its outcome is predetermined, it is not a deal but an imposition and bullying. The Iranian nation will not bow to such impositions,” Khamenei said.

The Middle East has been beset by two years of conflict since Iran-backed Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7 2023, sparking a devastating Israeli incursion into Gaza which triggered interventions by Iran's armed allies in the region.

The fighting, capped by the US-Israeli onslaught on Iran for 12 days in June, left Tehran and its affiliates seriously weakened, though a final resolution on the nuclear issues and Iran's posture toward Israel and the United States has remained elusive.

The 12-day conflict ended without a written agreement, leaving Iran trapped between war and peace.

Instead of rebuilding through reform or reconciliation, the Islamic Republic has doubled down on surveillance, militarization and the distribution of privilege among loyalists.

What has emerged is a system of permanent crisis management: endurance without renewal.

The real decision-makers in Tehran show no appetite for dialogue with the West, and are unwilling to acknowledge recent political and military setbacks or contemplate change.

The priority has become the securitization of every sphere of life—with key decisions even more concentrated in security bodies, and politics almost wholly transferred to backrooms.

A web of military institutions, economic foundations and domestic platforms mediates between state resources and loyal factions. Executions and heavy sentences have surged; and digital rationing and surveillance have expanded.

More ominously, perhaps, official rhetoric is now focused on the threat of foreign enemies and the need for “constant readiness.” Public life is framed as part of a “media war,” while selective enforcement of hijab laws seeks to contain public anger.

Securitized economy

The boundary between political and security institutions has effectively vanished, with routine governance filtered through bodies such as the Supreme National Security Council.

This securitization coincides with an economic shift.

The government’s developmental role has withered, replaced by a mechanism that distributes limited resources among the faithful.

Economic access—to loans, licenses, or capital—now depends more than ever on political trust, reinforcing the role of intermediaries and fueling the rise of new oligarchs.

Together, these dynamics have produced a control-centered order where security agencies, economic foundations, and data platforms operate as a single network.

Decisions are shaped by military priorities and calibrated to maintain balance among loyal factions. Society is governed through access management, creating obedience through the fear of exclusion.

Longevity but no renewal

This post-war order relies on the state’s ability to maintain control and contain crises.

For now, it has prevented wider instability, but its tools are inherently exhaustible. Surveillance must constantly expand to preserve the same level of discipline; redistribution, when not backed by production, steadily drains what remains of the economy.

Decision-making has become reactive and short-term, aimed at averting immediate risks rather than shaping a long-term vision. Institutions function but no longer evolve; ad-hoc councils have replaced political processes

The result is a façade of coordination that in reality narrows the space for reform.

The endurance of this system stems less from institutional strength than from fear—of both domestic unrest and external pressure—and from the absence of political alternatives.

Dissenting forces lack organization; insiders lack capacity for change. The Islamic Republic thus persists through a passive form of survival, feeding on control and limited access to resources.

It may last for years, but this durability is merely a postponement of decisions, one whose eventual cost will fall on both the state and the Iranian people.

“If any aggression is committed against Iran, our response will be stronger than the 12-day war and we will turn the region into hell for the enemy,” Pakpour said, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.

He added that Iran’s missile systems had performed with “power and precision” during the June war with Israel.

Pakpour made the remarks during a meeting in Tehran with Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji.

According to Iranian state media, Al-Araji emphasized Iraq’s commitment to security cooperation with Iran and saying his country would not allow its territory to be used for hostile acts against Tehran.

Iran’s top military officials have repeatedly warned they are monitoring regional adversaries and will respond forcefully if provoked.

Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Monday that Tehran was not seeking war but would deliver a completely different response if attacked.

An Iranian lawmaker also warned on Tuesday that Iran would destroy enemy bases in the region if attacked.

“If the enemy is not attacking now, it is because it cannot,” Esmaeil Siavoshi said on Tuesday, according to state media. “It knows that if it attacks, we will destroy all its bases in the Persian Gulf.”

Pakpour said cooperation between Iran and Iraq was essential to prevent foreign interference and to ensure border security, adding that both countries had agreed to strengthen coordination through a joint field committee.

“All that stands in the way of progress is a hostile and treacherous Iranian IRGC leadership and its proxies,” Barrack said on X, describing Tehran and its network of militias as the chief obstacle to regional stability.

In a detailed social media statement titled “Syria and Lebanon Are the Next Pieces for Levant Peace,” Barrack said the momentum from the Gaza ceasefire and the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit has created a historic opportunity to rebuild the region—if Iran’s influence can be contained.

Barrack said “the rest of the region is accelerating towards expulsion of Iran’s terrorist proxies,” and argued that the Middle East’s political and economic realignment is already underway.

Turning to Lebanon, Barrack pressed Beirut to distance itself from Iran-backed Hezbollah and embrace US and French-sponsored disarmament efforts.

Hezbollah’s continued dominance, he warned, has left Lebanon “an army without authority and a government without control,” deterring investment and threatening new conflict with Israel.

He described President Donald Trump’s twenty-point peace plan as a blueprint for reconstruction, reconciliation, and economic integration that could transform “a century of conflict into a generation of cooperation.”

Barrack concluded that the Middle East now faces a defining choice: to isolate Iran and embrace reconciliation, or risk losing a rare moment of regional unity and peace.

“Iran stands terminally weakened – politically, economically, and morally,” he added, predicting that Saudi Arabia’s expected entry into the Abraham Accords would accelerate a shift “drawn not by pressure but by prosperity.”

The Abraham Accords, brokered in 2020 by President Donald Trump and his senior adviser son-in-law Jared Kushner, normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states.

Current efforts to expand that framework could gain momentum following the Gaza ceasefire.