With the Iran war in its sixth week, we don’t yet know how or when it will end. But we know that it matters. A lot. All wars matter intensely to those caught up in them, but not every war matters to the whole world. The Iran war does, and every great and near-great power is adjusting its foreign-policy strategies in light of a conflict that is reshaping world politics.
China is thousands of miles from the Persian Gulf, but between its own need for Gulf oil and the effects of the Iran war on China’s neighbors and trading partners, the conflict is having major effects on Beijing. Some effects are positive, from Xi Jinping’s point of view. China’s return to its program of building new islands in the South China Sea has passed almost unnoticed in Washington, where attention is firmly fixed on the Middle East. But China doesn’t welcome higher fuel prices, and its export-dependent economy will be hard hit by any global recession.