Decoding Israel, Iran and China's collision of interests in the Middle East

South China Morning Post

14 hours ago

After President
Donald Trump boasted that last weekend's US strikes had 'obliterated'
Iran 's nuclear capabilities, the uneasy ceasefire he later announced between Israel and its arch-rival revealed a region fundamentally altered.
Both the Israeli and Iranian governments have proclaimed victory, signalling a shared – if wary – interest in maintaining the truce, though fresh reports of missile salvoes continue to cast doubt on its durability.
In separate briefings, Iranian and Israeli officials offered sharply contrasting accounts of the week's bombardments, yet neither side showed any appetite for a return to all-out warfare.
Israel has established uncontested air superiority across the region, maintaining an open aerial corridor from Damascus to Tehran and, in under a week, dismantling Iran's anti-air defences and decapitating the leadership of its military and nuclear programmes.
02:37
Iran threatens to shut Strait of Hormuz after US bombs key nuclear sites
Iran threatens to shut Strait of Hormuz after US bombs key nuclear sites
Yet sustaining simultaneous military pressure from
Gaza through
Lebanon and
Syria into Iran would stretch Israel's capabilities and political will beyond feasible limits. Meanwhile, the longevity of Iran's theocratic regime depends less on its ability to respond militarily than on the absence of a unified alternative. Competing factions remain fractured by divergent long-term objectives and lack the critical mass to mount a credible challenge to the existing power structure.
Even if the ceasefire holds, the region's security architecture has been irrevocably altered. Iran now finds itself more isolated than at any point in recent memory, with only cyberattacks and the threat to choke off the Strait of Hormuz remaining as deterrents – or, in a more audacious gambit, coordinating with its Yemeni Houthi proxies to disrupt traffic through both the
Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb on the Red Sea.
Neither scenario seems imminent, but both remain potent instruments in Tehran's diminishing arsenal. Both Iran and the Houthi militants possess extensive and varied mine warfare capabilities, from Soviet-era buoyant contact mines to modern, Chinese-manufactured, moored rocket-propelled mines capable of crippling the world's busiest commercial shipping corridors. Given that maritime demining is a lengthy process, reopening these vital sea lanes could take months.
A view of an Iranian oil facility on Khark Island in the Persian Gulf. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS