Strategic Ambiguity (If We Must)
By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | June 18, 2026
In recent years, critics on both sides of the aisle have taken aim at the longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan. They argue that Washington should abandon ambiguity and embrace “strategic clarity,” explicitly pledging to fight China over Taiwan. Others, such as Hoover Institute Fellow Eyck Freymann, have offered more sophisticated sounding alternatives like “structured ambiguity,” attempting to codify precisely what America would and would not do in various contingencies, particularly involving gray zone activities.
But abandoning a long-established policy that, whatever its faults, has prevented a major war between great powers for over half a century, in favor of a new policy, would be a serious mistake.
To understand why, let’s start with strategic ambiguity. Its origins lay in Richard Nixon’s opening to China. Years of increasing Sino-Soviet tensions opened the door to this diplomatic revolution of the early 1970s. With Washington and Beijing both seeing value in balancing against Moscow, efforts at normalizing diplomatic relations between the two began in earnest.
Taiwan was the major sticking point.
The resulting framework for normalization, the only one possible, was a carefully constructed kicking of the can down the road. In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the United States acknowledged that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintained there was but one China and that Taiwan was part of China. Importantly, Washington did not itself endorse Beijing’s sovereignty claim. Instead, it merely acknowledged the Chinese position.
This balancing act became even more delicate in 1979 when the Jimmy Carter administration formally completed the recognition of the People’s Republic of China while severing official diplomatic relations with Taipei. Congress, in response, passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which established an unofficial relationship with the island and authorized the sale of defensive arms.
With the prior mutual defense treaty of 1954 now gone, a new policy evolved: strategic ambiguity.
The genius, if one can use the term, of strategic ambiguity was that it created uncertainty for everyone involved.
Beijing could not know with certainty whether an invasion of Taiwan would provoke American military intervention. Taipei could not know with certainty that Washington would ride to its rescue if it formally declared independence. Both sides therefore had incentives to avoid unilateral changes to the status quo.
The arrangement was intentionally awkward. It was also remarkably successful.
For decades, the Taiwan Strait remained relatively stable. Taiwan developed into a prosperous democracy. China experienced its meteoric economic rise. The United States maintained productive, if often contentious, relations with both. Trade flourished across the strait even as political disagreements persisted.
The policy’s success rested on a simple but often overlooked reality: ambiguity restrained both Beijing and Taipei.
Today, however, a growing chorus in Washington insists that ambiguity itself invites aggression. Drawing heavily on analogies to the war in Ukraine, advocates of strategic clarity argue that the United States should make an explicit commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
The theory is straightforward. If Beijing knows with absolute certainty that America will intervene, deterrence will be strengthened.
The problem is that deterrence is a two-way street.
An explicit American security guarantee could just as easily embolden Taiwanese politicians inclined toward formal independence, believing that the United States had effectively removed the military risks associated with such a declaration. From Beijing’s perspective, strategic clarity might appear less like deterrence than a gradual abandonment of the understandings that have governed Sino-American relations since the 1970s, crossing a clearly delineated “red line” and provoking the very conflict it purported to prevent.
A somewhat more cautious proposal is “structured ambiguity,” which seeks to clarify certain commitments while preserving flexibility elsewhere. Specifically, its advocates hope to eliminate misunderstandings by clearly outlining what actions would precipitate what responses, including gray zone activities, while avoiding the rigidity of strategic clarity vis a vis U.S. military intervention in the event of an unprovoked invasion from the mainland.
But one suspects that this is merely ambiguity with additional paperwork, and a landscape filled with potential tripwires and chances for uncontrollable escalation.
For one of the central problems of diplomacy is that it is to a great extent a contest of perceptions. The more policymakers attempt to specify precisely where every line is drawn, the more opportunities arise for those lines to be tested.
A more restrained foreign policy would seek to reduce the risk of entanglement rather than refine the conditions under which American forces might eventually be committed to war.
Of course, from the non-interventionist perspective the entire debate is misguided. The United States has no treaty obligation to defend Taiwan—and needs none. American taxpayers have little interest in another potentially catastrophic conflict halfway around the globe; the American and world economy has everything to lose from such a confrontation; and there is little reason to think Washington would “win” such a conflict 90 miles from China’s coast in any event.
Unfortunately, that option receives little consideration in establishment circles. The debate instead centers on how Washington can more effectively manage a rivalry with Beijing while maintaining its existing commitments.
If those are the available choices, prudence suggests preserving the arrangement that has kept the peace.
Strategic ambiguity is imperfect. It frustrates politicians, pundits, and think tank analysts precisely because it lacks the satisfying certainty of a formal guarantee. But diplomacy is often successful because it leaves room for uncertainty. Not every problem requires a definitive answer. As my undergraduate professor used to say, paraphrasing Bismarck: diplomacy is the art of the possible.
The greatest danger to peace in the Taiwan Strait at this point may not be ambiguity itself but the temptation in Washington to move beyond it. History is filled with policymakers who believed they could engineer a more stable international order through greater precision and firmer commitments.
History is also filled with the unintended consequences of those efforts.
The strategic arsenal US lost in war against Iran – and why replenishment will take years
By Mohammad Molaei | Press TV | June 13, 2026
The sheer scale of munitions consumed during the Third Imposed War is without modern precedent in American warfare. As reported by The New York Times, within just the first two days of the military aggression that began on February 28, an estimated $5.6 billion worth of precision-guided munitions were expended, a sum that exceeds the annual military budgets of most countries in the world.
Over the full 40-day war leading up to the fragile ceasefire in early April, US forces struck more than 13,000 targets, many of which required multiple munitions each. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the cost of the air campaign alone reached between $11.3 billion in its first six days and $16.5 billion by day twelve.
The total cost over 40 days of full-scale military aggression, followed by subsequent hostilities in the Persian Gulf region, amounts to a far greater sum. While the Pentagon has estimated the figure at around $25 billion, independent assessments place the cost closer to $100 billion.
These figures do not reflect a campaign defined by restraint or resource discipline. Rather, they reveal a military establishment that bet its most advanced precision arsenal on a war it expected to win quickly – only to find itself mired in a quagmire of its own making.
JASSM-ER: Draining the Pacific’s first line of strike
No single weapons system reveals the strategic recklessness of so-called “Operation Epic Fury” more precisely than the AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range, known in Pentagon parlance as the JASSM-ER.
This is not a conventional cruise missile. It is a stealthy, air-launched precision strike weapon with a range exceeding 600 miles, purpose-built to penetrate the most sophisticated integrated air defense systems in the world.
Its operational logic is explicitly tied to high-end war scenarios – specifically, a potential confrontation with China in the Western Pacific, where the People’s Liberation Army has constructed the most elaborate anti-access/area-denial architecture in history. The JASSM-ER is the weapon Washington designed for its most serious adversary. And it is largely gone.
At the outset of the war of aggression launched on February 28, the United States held a JASSM-ER inventory of approximately 2,300 missiles. According to Bloomberg, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter, US forces consumed more than 1,000 JASSM-ERs in the first four weeks of the campaign alone.
The New York Times, drawing on Department of War sources, placed total JASSM-ER expenditure over the full campaign at approximately 1,100 missiles. An additional 47 were fired in a separate operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The order to drain Pacific stockpiles for the Iran campaign, stripping missiles from US facilities across the continental US and repositioning them to CENTCOM bases and RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom, was issued at the end of March, according to Bloomberg.
The arithmetic is unambiguous and brutal. Of a prewar JASSM-ER inventory of 2,300, approximately 425 remain available for the rest of the world, roughly 18 percent of the prewar total. In the shorter-range baseline JASSM variant, approximately two-thirds of total stocks across both versions were committed to the Iran campaign, according to Bloomberg.
CSIS calculates that around 25 percent of the total combined JASSM inventory was expended in just 40 days of combat.
The unit cost of the JASSM-ER is $1.1 million per missile. The JASSM baseline variant costs $2.6 million per unit at current procurement figures. The roughly 1,100 JASSM-ERs fired in the recent war, therefore, represent approximately $1.2 billion in precision strike munitions, consumed in a campaign that failed to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure, did not fracture its command structure, and did not alter the strategic balance in West Asia.
Replenishment will not be swift, as per experts. The US Air Force has procured JASSM variants at an average rate of nearly 500 per year over the past decade, and existing orders in the pipeline mean that JASSM inventories will recover more quickly than other systems; CSIS estimates “several months to a year” for baseline replacement.
However, this timeline assumes no new wars, no additional campaign consumption, and full US Congressional funding of the FY 2027 military procurement request, which has not yet been appropriated.
Tomahawk: A thousand missiles in the 40-day war
The BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is the oldest and most combat-proven precision strike weapon in the US Navy’s inventory, having been used in every major American military operation since Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Its versatility, fired from surface ships and submarines, capable of loitering and retargeting in flight, with a range of approximately 1,000 miles, makes it the Navy’s primary instrument of long-range power projection.
The war against Iran consumed it on a historically unprecedented scale.
The Washington Post reported that US naval assets fired more than 850 Tomahawks in the first month of the third imposed war. The Wall Street Journal subsequently updated that figure to more than 1,000 over the full pre-ceasefire campaign period.
CSIS’s analysis of the first six days alone identified 319 TLAMs expended, representing approximately 10 percent of the prewar inventory in less than a week.
The prewar Tomahawk inventory stood at approximately 3,200 missiles. The expenditure of over 1,000, therefore, represents roughly 31 percent of the prewar total consumed in 40 days, more than ten times the annual procurement rate.
The Pentagon ordered just 190 new Tomahawks in 2026, a figure barely more than half the number fired in the first six days of the war. The US Navy has requested 785 Tomahawks in the FY 2027 budget, a substantial increase from prior years, but CSIS projects these will not begin arriving in US inventories until March 2030, after 34 months of production lead time.
US Tomahawk inventories will not return to prewar levels until late 2030 at the earliest.
The cost consequences compound the strategic ones. Each Tomahawk Block V costs approximately $1.87 million. The 1,000-plus Tomahawks fired in the recent war, therefore, represent approximately $1.9 billion in naval strike capability, consumed against a country that, at the ceasefire, retained its ballistic missile launch capacity, its underground missile production infrastructure, and its ability to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The allied dimension of the Tomahawk shortage adds a further layer of strategic damage. Japan, which recently completed modifications on a destroyer to fire TLAMs and had purchased 400 missiles as part of its historic shift toward a more robust conventional deterrent posture against Chinese pressure, has reportedly been told that its deliveries may be delayed indefinitely because the United States must prioritize refilling its own depleted stockpiles.
Australia has also purchased more than 200 Tomahawks, and the Netherlands has purchased 175. All of these allied orders now sit in a queue behind American replenishment needs, weakening the combined deterrent posture of the US alliance network in the Western Pacific at precisely the moment that network is under the greatest pressure.
The defensive arsenal: Patriot, THAAD, and interceptor crisis
While the consumption of offensive strike missiles has drawn significant analytical attention, the depletion of America’s missile defense interceptor inventory may carry even more severe long-term strategic consequences.
These systems, including the much-hyped Patriot PAC-3 MSE, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and the Standard Missiles SM-3 and SM-6, are not interchangeable with cheaper alternatives. They are the irreplaceable components of layered missile defense architecture, designed to defeat the ballistic and cruise missile threats posed by peer and near-peer adversaries.
In the Pacific scenario, they are the systems that would need to protect US forward bases, carrier strike groups, and allied territory from Chinese ballistic missile salvos in the opening hours of any war. Instead, they are being consumed in the Persian Gulf.
The Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor, at approximately $4 million per unit, was among the most heavily used anti-missile systems in the recent war imposed on Iran.
The New York Times reported that over 1,200 Patriot interceptors were fired during the aggression. CSIS estimates that Patriot usage, combined with the ongoing supply of interceptors to Ukraine, has left prewar PAC-3 inventory at critically reduced levels.
The Army’s FY 2027 budget requests 3,203 Patriot missiles, a procurement figure that reflects the scale of the shortfall, but CSIS projects these will not begin delivery until May 2029, with full replenishment of prewar levels taking three or more years from the present.
Current Patriot production stands at approximately 650 interceptors per year, with roughly half going to allied orders. Lockheed Martin intends to surge production to 2,000 per year, but achieving this capacity requires years of facility and tooling expansion.
In the interim, the United States faces a set of allocation decisions with no good options: prioritize replenishment of its own depleted stocks, continue supplying Ukraine, or fulfill the orders of the 17 other countries that operate the Patriot system and are now watching their own deliveries pushed back indefinitely.
Swiss authorities have already threatened to cancel their Patriot purchase and seek an alternative supplier after being informed of delivery delays. The bilateral friction this production shortfall is generating with allied governments has been explicitly acknowledged by CSIS and represents a tangible erosion of alliance cohesion at a moment of acute strategic uncertainty.
The THAAD situation is, by CSIS’s assessment, the most critical of all. THAAD is the upper-tier component of the US missile defense architecture, designed to intercept ballistic missiles at higher altitudes and longer ranges than Patriot.
Its interceptors are expensive, scarce, and – as of the ongoing fragile ceasefire – severely depleted. CSIS estimates that between 52 and 81 percent of the prewar THAAD interceptor inventory was expended in the recent war and related offensives, building on roughly 150 THAAD interceptors already consumed during the 12-day war in June 2025.
There have been no new deliveries of THAAD interceptors since August 2023. Deliveries are not scheduled to resume until April 2027 at the earliest. The US Army’s FY 2027 budget requests 857 THAAD interceptors, which CSIS projects will not complete the replacement of the usage during the recent war against Iran until the end of calendar year 2029.
Compounding the interceptor shortage is the damage or possible destruction of multiple AN/TPY-2 radar systems – the targeting backbone of THAAD batteries – during Iranian retaliatory strikes on US facilities in the region.
Only 13 AN/TPY-2 radars have been delivered to the United States in total. The loss or degradation of even two or three of these systems represents a qualitative capability gap that cannot be papered over by procurement requests. The US has also maintained only eight THAAD batteries in total, a number that was considered inadequate for simultaneous deployment in multiple theaters even before the war on Iran consumed the interceptors from those batteries at a rate far exceeding production capacity to replace them.
The ship-launched Standard Missiles present a somewhat less acute but still serious picture. CSIS estimates that SM-3 expenditure in the recent war ranged from 31 to 60 percent of prewar inventory, while SM-6 consumption ran between 16 and 32 percent.
Both missiles carry production lead times of 36 to 39 months from contract award to first delivery. Inventories will not return to prewar levels until early 2029 – despite their relatively lower usage in the 40-day war of aggression – reflecting the cumulative effect of years of inadequate procurement before the war began.
The cost ledger: What was spent and what was not gained
The aggregate financial cost of the munitions consumed in the recent war against Iran, calculated from unit costs and reported expenditure figures, represents one of the most expensive failed military campaigns in the history of modern warfare.
The principal expenditures, based on CSIS data and DOD reporting, break down as follows. Over 1,100 JASSM-ER missiles at $1.1 million each account for approximately $1.21 billion. More than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles at $1.87 million each represent approximately $1.87 billion. Over 1,200 Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptors at $4 million each amount to approximately $4.8 billion. More than 1,000 Precision Strike Missiles and ATACMS, at between $500,000 and $1.5 million each, add a further $500 million to $1.5 billion.
THAAD interceptors, along with SM-3 and SM-6 expenditures, contribute several hundred million more at their respective unit costs. The aggregate munitions cost of the war runs to well in excess of $10 billion, and that figure covers only the missiles, not the operational costs of the platforms that delivered them, the intelligence infrastructure that supported targeting, or the diplomatic capital expended in securing basing and overflight rights.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth himself, in testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged that replenishment will take “months and years, depending on the weapon system.” CSIS’s assessment supports that timeline in its conservative form and exceeds it in the more pessimistic analysis.
The combined picture across all seven critical munitions categories is that the US will not return to prewar inventory levels for any of its most critical systems before 2028 at the earliest, with Tomahawk, THAAD, and Patriot taking three or more years from the present.
Building inventories to the levels that war planners have identified as necessary for a high-intensity peer war, levels that were already considered insufficient even before the Iran war, will take additional years beyond that.
The China variable: A window of vulnerability measured in years
The strategic meaning of these numbers transcends the war against Iran in itself. The JASSM-ER was not designed to strike Iranian nuclear facilities but to defeat Chinese integrated air defense systems protecting military targets in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
The Tomahawk was not stockpiled to prosecute a campaign in the Persian Gulf but maintained as the Navy’s primary instrument of long-range strike in a Western Pacific contingency. The THAAD interceptors depleted over Iranian skies were the same interceptors positioned in South Korea and Guam to defend against North Korean and Chinese ballistic missile threats. They have been moved and their replacements are years away.
Even before the war against Iran, as assessments suggest, US munitions stockpiles were deemed insufficient for a peer competitor fight in the Western Pacific, based on the classified war-gaming conclusions of the House Select Committee on China.
That shortfall is now dramatically more acute. The think tank’s characterization that depleted inventories have created a “window of vulnerability” for a potential Western Pacific war is not alarmist rhetoric but a straightforward arithmetic conclusion drawn from the procurement timelines and inventory figures its researchers have calculated from publicly available budget documents.
The implications for Chinese strategic calculations are substantial and not easily dismissed. Beijing’s military planners have observed, in real time, that the US consumed its primary long-range strike inventory – the very capabilities designed to hold Chinese assets at risk in a Taiwan contingency – in a 40-day war that did not achieve its strategic objectives.
They have observed that the combined JASSM and Tomahawk inventories available for Pacific contingencies are now a fraction of their prewar levels. They have observed that THAAD batteries have been stripped from South Korea – degrading the missile defense coverage of a key US ally on China’s periphery – and that their replacement is years away.
And they have observed that American production capacity, constrained by decades of procurement at peacetime rates and manufacturing lead times measured in years rather than months, cannot rapidly reverse any of these deficits, regardless of how much money US Congress appropriates.
This is not the profile of a deterrent in robust health, but the profile of a military establishment that has consumed its premium, China-specific capabilities in a secondary theater without achieving the decisive outcome that would have justified the expenditure, and that now faces a multi-year period of structural vulnerability during which its ability to credibly threaten the use of force in the Taiwan Strait is materially diminished.
The CSIS report notes with the cautious observation that China is deeply aware it has no recent combat experience, while the US military has been engaged in wars on multiple fronts, and that this experiential differential may preserve deterrence until inventories are restored. This is a thin reed on which to hang the credibility of American extended deterrence across Indo-Pacific.
The deterrent value of operational skill is real, but it is not a substitute for the physical missiles that a deterrent posture requires, and Beijing’s strategic calculus is driven more by inventory mathematics than by assessments of American tactical proficiency.
The production constraint: Why money cannot buy time
The Trump administration has responded to the munitions crisis with a series of framework agreements with major contractors – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing – committing to expand production capacity across the full range of critical munitions.
Lockheed Martin has agreed to quadruple THAAD interceptor production capacity from 96 to 400 per year. Raytheon has committed to increasing Tomahawk production to more than 1,000 per year and Patriot MSE output to 2,000 per year.
These are significant capacity targets that, if achieved, would substantially accelerate inventory recovery relative to current baselines.
But capacity is not production, and production agreements are not delivered missiles, according to military experts. The fundamental constraint is not financial but temporal. Manufacturing lead time for advanced missile systems – the period between contract award and first delivery – runs between 34 and 39 months for the most critical systems. Building new production facilities, qualifying new supply chains, training additional skilled labor, and resolving bottlenecks in specialized components such as guidance systems and rocket motors are processes measured in years, not quarters.
The FY 2027 defense budget, even if fully and promptly appropriated by a Congress that has not yet voted on it, will not produce a single additional THAAD interceptor or Tomahawk before 2030. The window of vulnerability is already wide open.
Hegseth’s own assessment before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that replenishment will take “months and years, depending on the weapon system,” represents, in the carefully hedged language of executive branch testimony, an acknowledgment that the US has accepted a period of strategic risk in exchange for a military campaign that did not deliver the outcome its architects promised.
The question that American strategic planners cannot answer to Beijing’s satisfaction is how long that window remains open – and what Beijing’s strategic interests, combined with this window of opportunity, might produce.
Iran, Russia, China reject IAEA resolution as politically driven
Al Mayadeen | June 10, 2026
Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna has issued a sharp rebuke of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors’ resolution, rejecting its call on Tehran to declare its uranium stocks and denouncing the move as a politically motivated act unworthy of a technical body.
The mission said the measure was “another political resolution” adopted through a “shaky vote,” saying it falls well short of the standards expected of an agency tasked with technical oversight of nuclear affairs.
The US-backed resolution, passed on Wednesday, calls on Tehran to declare its remaining enriched uranium stocks and allow inspectors to verify them. Submitted by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, it cleared the 35-nation board with 21 votes in favor, three against, and 10 abstentions. Russia, China, and Niger cast the three opposing votes, while Venezuela was barred from taking part.
‘Instrumentalized by warmongers’
Questioning the IAEA’s fitness to act as a neutral arbiter, the mission asked how the agency can be regarded as credible when it is “instrumentalized by warmongers” while remaining unable to register concern over “the most extensive unlawful armed attacks” on safeguarded nuclear facilities.
Iran further accused the resolution of cloaking confrontation in the language of diplomacy, noting that it purports to advance dialogue even as Washington “engages in further acts of aggression, including against Iranian civilian infrastructure, and promotes confrontation in different fora.”
Tehran made clear it does not intend to comply with “a flawed instrument,” stating that any genuine diplomatic process demands “a minimum of good faith” from all parties. Iran added that it will “protect its inalienable rights in response to this flawed resolution.”
Iran, China, Russia reject US draft
In a joint statement delivered at the Board of Governors meeting, Iran, China, and Russia denounced the US draft resolution as politically motivated and unconstructive, warning that it would further aggravate an already fragile situation.
The three countries stressed they oppose any attempt to mislead member states about the true status of Iran’s nuclear programme, including through the director general.
Strikes disrupted verification
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi revealed on Tuesday that it was US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities that had disrupted IAEA verification, forcing inspectors out of the country over safety concerns and halting routine monitoring.
Washington, he stressed, then sought to exploit that disruption to intensify pressure on Tehran through the agency’s Board of Governors.
Gharibabadi called on the international community to hold those who carried out the attacks accountable, highlighting that obstructing international verification at safeguarded facilities should be treated as a legal and international responsibility.
The US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 with attacks on Iranian territory, including the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz.
Tehran maintains its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, a position confirmed by multiple US intelligence assessments, and argues that the strikes are precisely what have made implementation of its safeguards obligations impossible at the damaged sites.
US Leads Nuclear Spending Surge as Global Arsenal Costs Hit Record $119 Billion
Sputnik – 09.06.2026
The US heads a record rise in nuclear arsenal spending, accounting alone for $69.2 billion of the $119 billion spent on nuclear arsenals in 2025 by the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
The total represents a 19% increase from 2024, the highest level since ICAN began tracking spending of Russia, China, the US, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel in 2020.
Other major increases included:
- China: 7% increase to $13.5 billion
- United Kingdom: 17% increase to $12.6 billion
- Russia: 6% increase to $9.5 billion
Screwed again: small investors to bail out billionaires from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic
Inside China Business | June 6, 2026
• Investor alert: Chinese AI is booming in … • The AI industry in the US is doomed. Now … China Will Absorb Taiwan
Tales of the American Empire | June 4, 2026
• China Will Not Invade Taiwan • US Navy Insanity in Japan • The Mythical Chinese Military Threat • We Were Almost Entirely Wrong About China • The American War on China Iran to deepen ties with ‘principal strategic partner’ China: Ghalibaf
Beijing and Tehran have significantly expanded their strategic cooperation since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran
The Cradle | June 3, 2026
Iranian Parliament Speaker and special representative for China affairs, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, held the first joint meeting with key economic officials on 3 June to align Tehran’s economic strategy toward Beijing.
The session in Tehran included the ministers of economy, oil, and industry, alongside the central bank governor and the head of the Plan and Budget Organization.
The assembly focused on establishing a unified government approach to elevate bilateral relations and coordinate the administration’s economic priorities. During the proceedings, officials evaluated China’s economic conduct amid the US-Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the US and Israel.
Participants agreed to submit formal proposals to Ghalibaf to resolve outstanding challenges and deepen cooperation.
This coordination effort supports a developing strategy to position China as Iran’s “principal strategic partner” while expanding collaboration on regional and international issues.
Roughly 30 China-linked vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz in a single day in mid-May under the supervision of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy.
These transits follow a “management protocol” established after Iran restricted the waterway to US and Israeli-linked vessels in February.
While the strait remains largely closed, passage is permitted for commercial ships that comply with Iranian naval procedures and utilize designated corridors
In parallel, since the illegal US blockade on Iranian ports was implemented in April, Iran has tripled its rail exports of oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to China in an effort to bypass the economic stranglehold.
Freight trains on the 10,400-kilometer corridor now depart every three to four days, a significant increase from the previous weekly schedule, and halve traditional sea transit times to roughly 15 days.
Despite this, rail capacity remains a modest alternative to maritime shipping; one train carries 60,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil, while large tankers can transport upwards of 2 million barrels.
The Iran War has destroyed fertilizer markets and farmers everywhere, almost
Inside China Business | June 2, 2026
The War on Iran has left hundreds of thousands of tons of fertilizers stranded in the Persian Gulf, and destroyed years of forward natural gas production. Fertilizer supplies are collapsing, with billions of dollars’ worth of contracts to farmers voided. China enacted export curbs on fertilizers and upstream products in the opening days of the war, to ensure domestic farm production was not impacted.
Bonus video:
Resources and links:
- Chuck Grassley Leads Senate Judiciary Committee In Hearing On Fertilizer Industry Competition • Chuck Grassley Leads Senate Judiciary Comm…
- Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone • Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietl…
- Farm Action
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Persian Gulf Strait Authority says it processed 300+ transit requests since May
Press TV – June 1, 2026
More than 300 non-Iranian vessels, mostly oil tankers, have submitted their information to secure a safe passage permit from the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) since the entity began its operations in early May, the PGSA announced in a post on X on Tuesday.
The majority of these requests came from outbound ships, which accounted for 77 percent of the total applications. Inbound ships made up the remaining 23 percent.
The PGSA noted that the primary destinations for outbound vessels have been Asian countries, particularly China and India, while the main destination for inbound ships has been the United Arab Emirates.
Iran established the PGSA following the imposition of its sovereign regulatory framework for maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
According to the PGSA, the authority does not have the power to issue permits for ships from hostile countries.
The move comes as Washington has attempted to prevent Iran from exercising its sovereign rights in the strait.
On May 27, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the PGSA, accusing the body of funnelling revenue from a toll system to the IRGC.
The PGSA has dismissed the sanctions as an extension of Washington’s “failed” attempts to dominate the waterway, stating that it “considers being sanctioned by a country whose president boasts about piracy to be a sign of its positive performance”.
Sinopec’s Jiyang shale oil base in Shandong Province produces 2 million tons of crude oil
Global Times | May 25, 2026
A major shale oil base in Jiyang, East China’s Shandong Province, which is operated by Sinopec, has achieved cumulative crude output exceeding 2 million tons, marking a breakthrough in safeguarding national energy security, China Media Group reported on Monday.
Covering 7,300 square kilometers, the base has accelerated production capacity expansion this year. In the first four months of this year, the zone put 10 high-production wells into operation, delivering shale oil output of 14,000 tons, a 15 percent year-on-year increase.
Shale oil, trapped in tight and fragmented rock formations with no natural flow capacity, is widely regarded as one of the world’s most difficult exploration challenges.
Through independent innovation, Chinese researchers have conquered more than 40 key technological bottlenecks. They pioneered a targeted exploration and development theory tailored for continental faulted basins. The breakthroughs have enabled the effective exploitation of 90 percent of previously inaccessible shale oil resources in the region, uncovering three 100 million ton level oil fields.
The Jiyang shale oil demonstration zone has reported proven geological reserves of 327 million tons, with estimated total resources reaching 10.5 billion tons. The massive new reserve is equivalent to discovering a large new oilfield, supporting stable crude output growth and reinforcing China’s energy security.
China boasts abundant shale oil resources, distributed across five major basin areas including the Bohai Bay and Ordos in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as well as eight medium-sized and small basins. The country’s technically recoverable shale oil reserves now rank third worldwide at about 32 billion barrels.
Unlike marine shale oil overseas, China’s shale oil is largely continental, featuring more complex geological conditions and greater development difficulties, said Guo Xusheng, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Driven by continuous technological breakthroughs, China’s total proven shale oil reserves have reached 1.84 billion tons. The country’s annual shale oil output topped 8.5 million tons last year and is expected to surpass 10 million tons soon, demonstrating strong development prospects.
With the orderly construction of national-level shale oil demonstration zones including Jiyang, China has built the world’s largest continental shale oil development system with fully self-controllable core technologies. The industry has achieved a leap from technological breakthroughs to large-scale stable production, emerging as a strategic pillar in safeguarding national energy security.
Are we on the verge of a US-Iran deal?
China is emerging as the silent, indispensable diplomatic power in the region
By Trita Parsi | May 22, 2026
Nothing is confirmed and finalized yet, and the spoilers should not be underestimated, but lots of activity points in the direction of a deal.
A few things stand out:
1. The role of China in the background is essential. Without having its fingerprints on the deal, and by that, avoiding any responsibility if it fails, China is emerging as the silent, indispensable diplomatic power in the region. (While Pakistan’s Asim Munir is traveling to Tehran, the Pakistani Prime Minister will be departing for Beijing shortly)
2. The regional involvement in the mediation is astounding: Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi and Oman are all or have all been playing an instrumental role in moving things forward. If a deal is reached, it will have regional buy-in (save from Israel and the UAE) at levels far beyond the JCPOA.
3. Regional diplomats and intel folks have been shuttling in and out of Tehran for weeks now. Qatar’s role, in particular, is noteworthy.
4. Europe’s absence is noticeable but not felt, as its irrelevance is becoming normalized.
5. More ships have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Whether these were mainly tankers going to China, and whether China paid a fee, is unclear at this point. But it is noteworthy that the ships are passing through both the Iranian AND the American “blockades.”
6. Though some distance remains to reaching a deal, my own conversation with folks on both sides has left me slightly more optimistic, primarily because of the flexibility I am detecting on the Iranian side regarding the stockpile (despite the Reuters story from yesterday). Ideas that were categorically rejected two weeks ago are now being genuinely considered.
7. If a deal is secured, Trump will face a lot of criticism from the Blob and the pro-Israel crowd in DC, but he will be in a very good position to sell the deal to the American public, whose concerns are very different from those of the Blob…
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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