William Morgan
America and Israel's ongoing war against Iran has drawn a sharp rebuke from the world's second superpower, China, which has warned that the 'flames of war' could easily spread if the conflict is not soon brought to an end.
Chinese officials had spent much of the week following US-Israeli strikes on its Middle Eastern ally avoiding the topic as much as possible, but with no end in sight and global oil prices spiking to $119 per barrel over the weekend, major political figures in the country have spoken out.
This is because Iran, and the Middle East more generally, has become both a key source of oil for China's vast industrial base, as well as the main target for Chinese state investment. States across the region account for over 10 percent of the country's investment portfolio.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi blasted the attack on Iran this Sunday at the annual meeting of the Communist Party's legislature. Marking one of the first major public critiques from China over the strikes, he said: “This was a war that should never have happened, and a war that benefited no one.”
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Yi went to great efforts to not directly attack President Trump, who is due to visit China and meet with President Xi Jingping in the coming weeks after waging a trade war with them for much of the first year of his second term in office.
Instead, the foreign minister championed his country as 'the world’s most important force of peace, stability and justice,' while slamming the possible consequences of the armed conflict, which has already claimed the lives of around 500 Lebanese people and roughly 1300 Iranians in just over a week.
He called on world leaders to 'prevent the situation from escalating' while making a chilling prediction about what a protracted war could mean for the Middle East, arguing that Western nations needed to avoid the 'spread of the flames of war.'
“All parties should return to the negotiating table as soon as possible and resolve their differences through equal dialogue,” Foreign Minister Yi said, before imparting some wisdom on the US and Israel.
"Ancient Chinese wisdom warns that weapons are ominous tools, and should not be used without discretion," Yi said at the Sunday press conference. "The Middle East is engulfed in flames. This is a war that should not have happened — it is a war that does no one any good."
His words were echoed on Monday, as Chinese officials met with Gulf partners to amplify their calls for a ceasefire and a return to the negotiations that ended on February 28 when Israel launched an attack that wiped out Iran's leadership, including Ayatollah Khamenei.
"China urges all parties to immediately cease fire and stop hostilities." their regional envoy said on Monday after meeting with top Saudi officials.
Security in the Middle East is perhaps as much in China's interests as it is America's, with much of the country's mass investments in the region have been in the very places that have been damaged as a result of the stream of cheap drones coming from Iran.
That includes at the desalination plants and oil refineries that have become a focal point for Tehran's wider retaliation against Gulf states, many of which are part-owned by Chinese investors, but are now heavily damaged and face drastic production cuts.
This could prove disastrous for manufacturing giant China, which relies on the Middle East for half of its total oil consumption, around a quarter of which came from Iran until last week.