Promises made, promises kept: although President Donald Trump waited only nine days instead of the 10 he told Iran that he would give the regime to acquiesce to American demands in a nuclear weapons deal, the president followed through with his threat, launching a joint attack with Israel on Iran.
Iran responded to “Operation Epic Fury” with the baffling decision to fire ballistic missiles at Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. And now, some 12 hours after initial hostilities began, the U.S. and Israel have not started World War III, but rather, they have been publicly supported by Iran’s Arab neighbors. Saudi Arabia, which intercepted and condemned Iran’s attacks, said the kingdom will “take all necessary measures” to defend itself, “including the option of responding to aggression,” while Qatar similarly affirmed it “reserves its full right to respond.”
With Iran now completely isolated from the Gulf countries that had previously cautioned the U.S. against military action confronting the regime, Iran is so thoroughly defanged that its demise is a question of probability, not implausibility. Perhaps the greater victory for Trump than the destruction of the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism is that, at last, he may have destroyed China’s highly sophisticated system of globally cheap oil supply, and thus obstruct the Communist Party’s ability to invade Taiwan.
THE US AND ISRAEL ATTACKED IRAN: WHAT WE KNOW
China imported some 11.1 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2024, about two-fifths of which came from sanctioned states that have had to supply the Chinese at a massive discount. While official Chinese statistics predictably do not disclose the real figures, independent tanker trackers and customs analysts best estimate that Russia supplied China with 2.17 million barrels per day, Iran 1.38 million, and Venezuela around a half-million.
After Trump successfully deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and left some version of an American proxy state in its stead, if Iran falls to a Western government and out of the thrall of the CCP, more than two-thirds of China’s oil imports will come from countries either aligned with the West or likely pressured into complying with U.S. orders. Only a remaining one-fifth of China’s oil supply will come from a country, Russia, that will continue to sell to China at artificially discounted prices.
Winning over China’s oil suppliers into Western sanctions standards wouldn’t obliterate China’s oil access, but rather its price advantage. The real victory is that the obliteration of its price advantage would likely translate to a stranglehold of oil access if China were to try to invade Taiwan. Not only would some two-thirds of its oil supply likely comply with U.S. sanctions and constrain oil sales to China, but also those who did try to sell to China would be physically constrained from doing so; China is mostly dependent on importing oil by sea, including the straits currently influenced by the Iranian regime that would be blocked off if the Ayatollah were no longer in charge. The ending of the Iranian regime would limit the CCP’s ability to arbitrage sanctions risk, escalating the literal and figurative cost of China’s ability to go after Taiwan.
SEAN DURNS: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC HAD ITS CHANCE
If China holds its fire, it can still source normally-priced oil from the rest of the world, but it loses its cheap oil arbitrage, making the CCP more sanctions-prone than it has been in decades.
In targeting Venezuela and Iran, Trump isn’t playing checkers, but chess. If Iran falls as quickly as Maduro did, it wouldn’t be long before Trump could say checkmate to the Chinese if they are stupid enough to try their hand at an invasion of Taiwan.