DEAR SOPHIA,
HERE’S THE UPDATE. WITH IRAN NOW STATING THAT IT WILL PERMIT SHIPS TO MOVE OIL BUT ONLY IF THE OIL IS PAID FOR WITH CHINESE CURRENCY, THIS IS ANOTHER PIECE IN THE CHESS GAME. FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS, MY OPINION HAS BEEN THAT THERE WILL BE A GLOBAL CONFLICT THAT WILL LIKELY ARRIVE BETWEEN 2030 AND 2033. THE CONFLICT IS GOING TO BE BETWEEN THE WEST AND ASIA THAT IS DOMINATED BY CHINA. WHETHER RUSSIA IS WITH CHINA OR THE WEST IS YET TO BE DETERMINED. THE EASY CYNICAL ARGUMENT THAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT OIL IS A FALLACY. OIL IS THE VERY FOUNDATION OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. WITHOUT OIL, WE ARE BACK IN THE STEAM ENGINE ERA AND ALL MODERN AMENITIES WILL NOT EXIST. FOOD PRODUCTION, MEDICINE, LOCOMOTION OF ANY TYPE. MODERN ELECTRONICS. CLOTHING. VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING THAT GIVES COMFORT TO MODERN CIVILIZATION WILL NOT EXIST. HOWEVER, THE FOUNDATION OF THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM IS BASED ON THE US DOLLAR. IF THAT IS DETHRONED, OUR ECONOMY WILL SUFFER GREATLY AND THIS LATEST MOVE BY IRAN IS ANOTHER INDICATOR THAT WE ARE IN A GREAT STRUGGLE WITH CHINA.
TWO THINGS YOU SHOULD LOOK UP: PETRODOLLAR RECYCLING AND THE 100 YEAR MARATHON. THE FOUNDATION OF THE WEST SPIRITUALLY, PHILOSOPHICALLY AND ETHICALLY IS HELLENISM AND JUDEO CHRISTIANITY. THE EAST DOES NOT RESPECT THESE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WEST. IT IS THE SAME BATTLE SINCE THE TIME OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, RECYCLING OVER AND OVER. MAKE NO MISTAKE, OIL IS WORTH FIGHTING OVER BECAUSE OIL IS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL MODERN CIVILIZATION.
STAY ENGAGED IN CURRENT EVENTS BECAUSE THESE EVENTS ARE SHAPING THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
143
LOVE,
DAD
DEAR SOPHIA,
THIS MOVE AGAINST IRAN AND VENEZUELA (AND SOON CUBA) ARE JUST PIECES ON THE CHESS BOARD BEING MOVED AGAINST THE MAIN ADVERSARY WHICH IS CHINA. FOR THE LAST 4,000 YEARS, CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN ENGAGED IN ONE LONG ENDLESS CHESS GAME WITH THE WORLD AS THE CHESS BOARD. AS I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO PLAY CHESS THE OBJECT IS CHECKMATE. IN THE INTERNATIONAL GAME, THERE IS NO CHECKMATE BUT CONTINUAL CHECKING. I WILL SPEAK MORE ABOUT THIS TO YOU IN A LATER POST BUT FOR NOW READ THIS.
HERE IS AN UPDATE (AND MORE TO COME): THE SITUATION WITH IRAN BEGAN 47 YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE. THAT WAS A DECLARATION OF WAR ON THE USA WHEN IRAN TOOK OUR EMBASSY, AMBASSADORS AND OTHER AMERICANS HOSTAGE FOR 444 DAYS. WE HAVE BEEN ITCHING TO SETTLE THAT SCORE FOR 47 YEARS. THE NEXT ISSUE IS THE USA HAS BEEN ITCHING TO SETTLE THE SCORE WITH CUBA SINCE 1961. THIS IS WHY I URGE YOU TO KEEP READING HISTORY. THESE EVENTS ARE ALL INTERTWINED AND THE HISTORICAL THREADS IN MANY INSTANCES GO BACK 3-4,000 YEARS. THERE IS NO RISK OF A WAR RIGHT NOW WHERE THE DRAFT WILL BE REINSTATED. THERE WILL BE – HOWEVER – BE A WAR THAT IS LIKELY TO START BETWEEN 2030 AND 2033. I WILL GIVE MORE DETAILS IN AN UPDATE TO THIS POST LATER THIS WEEK. 286 – LOVE, DAD
I KNOW MORE THAN I AM LETTING ON, I SEE MORE THAN I AM LETTING ON.
STAY SAFE. I KNOW YOU ARE TRYING TO,
143
LOVE,
DAD
China is Scrambling
The Overnight Pivot
Mar 04, 2026
This piece was originally published in National Review
I have added edits given today’s developments.
The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion.
Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because every available response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf leads Beijing into a trap of its own contradictions.
Three Reasons Operation Epic Fury Is Catastrophic for Xi
First, the Iranian counterweight is gone. In 2021, Xi told senior Party officials that “the East is rising and the West is declining,” that America was “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world,” and that China was entering a period of strategic opportunity. Iran was central to that thesis. Beijing needed a defiant Tehran to keep Washington pinned down in the Gulf, to sustain a sanctions-proof energy corridor, and above all, to stand as living evidence that American power had hard limits. The entire architecture of CCP’s dogma of inevitability, which rested on Iran’s ability to endure, and Epic Fury removed the foundation in a single afternoon.
Khamenei was the man who made the thesis feel real. Beijing’s relationship with the Islamic Republic was never really ideological, but Khamenei’s survival was the single most useful fact in Chinese foreign policy. Here was a man Washington had threatened, sanctioned, plotted against, and encircled for over four decades, and he was still giving Friday sermons. Xi personally signed the comprehensive strategic partnership with Khamenei’s government. He personally authorized the weapons transfers. And he personally wielded the Security Council veto. None of it kept Khamenei alive for one additional hour once Washington decided he was finished.
Second, Xi’s own story is collapsing from the inside. The story he told 1.4 billion people, that America is a declining power incapable of decisive force projection, does not match what happened in seventy-two hours over Tehran. State media can suppress the footage and the censors can scrub Weibo, but the ones who matter most, the military planners, the foreign policy professionals, the provincial officials who read between the lines for a living, know what they saw. And if the story is wrong about Iran, the unavoidable next question is whether it was ever right about anything else.
Third, the energy math turns against Beijing. China bought 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian oil last year and takes over 80% of everything Iran ships. Half of China’s total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. With Ayatollah Khamenei now dead and Iran’s military leadership weakened, the Gulf’s strategic balance shifts decisively toward Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose energy ties with the United States are strengthening. China’s old selling point was very simple and transactional: we buy your oil and never mention human rights. That pitch loses its utility when Gulf producers already feel protected by an American security guarantee that just proved, on live television, that it works.
The Messaging Trap
Xi’s communications problem may be worse than his strategic one, because there is no good answer. If Beijing endorses the strikes, it loses the “Global South.” If Beijing condemns the strikes, it attaches Chinese prestige to a dead man’s regime, and risks provoking a Trump administration that has just demonstrated, through the act itself, that it does not bluff.
So Beijing chose the remaining option: hide behind the United Nations. Mao Ning called the killing “a grave violation of sovereignty.” The language sounds forceful, but the Belt and Road countries are watching, and what they see so far is a confused superpower reading from a script while American carriers do the actual deciding.
Every Iranian Move Is a Chinese Loss
The truly vicious part of Beijing’s situation is that Iran’s entire playbook for retaliation was designed to punish Washington, but the geography and economics of each weapon mean the damage lands on China instead. Iranian missiles aimed at Gulf states threaten the very oil infrastructure and port facilities that Chinese companies have spent billions investing in across the region.
The Strait of Hormuz is worse. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced within hours that no ship would pass through the channel, a threat designed as leverage against the West, except that the United States has a shale industry and a crisis-proof strategic petroleum reserve. In fact, according to Kayrros, as of March 31, 2025, China had only filled 56% percent of its above-ground strategic and commercial storage facilities.
Which means that nearly 45% of China’s own oil imports now sit/would sit hostage to a blockade that was never meant to hurt Beijing. The Houthis have resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping, every flare-up in Iraq threatens oil concessions that Chinese companies spent billions building, and the sum of Iran’s resistance amounts to a systematic disruption of Chinese commercial interests across every waterway and energy corridor Beijing depends on, executed in Khamenei’s name, with no regard for who actually pays the price.
Counting Moves
The clearest sign of Beijing’s disorientation is the absence of action: no emergency summits, no diplomatic maneuvers, no military repositioning, even as a Chinese citizen was killed in crossfire in Tehran and over 300 nationals were evacuated. The sum total of Beijing’s response to the largest American military operation in a generation remains a press conference.
Xi bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off. Operation Epic Fury was designed to break the Islamic Republic, but it may also have exposed the uncomfortable truth that Chinese influence in the Middle East was only as durable as the assumption that no one would ever call it into question, and in Zhongnanhai, they know it.
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