Foreign media speculates “Trump attacks Iran, aimed at China” — Chinese scholars call the theory foolish or malicious

Speculation meets pushback

It has been reported that some Western outlets have speculated the U.S. offensive against Iran is in part aimed at constraining China — a claim Chinese commentators and scholars reject as either foolish or malicious. Huxiu (虎嗅) published a roundup of those debates and reported a speech by Zhao Suisheng (赵穗生), a longtime U.S.-based scholar of Sino‑U.S. relations, who says there is no evidence supporting the idea that Israel or anyone else is holding compromising material on former President Donald Trump to engineer the war. Reportedly, the notion that Israel “controls” Trump’s actions is unsubstantiated and would, if true, belong in U.S. courts rather than on foreign front pages.

Miscalculation, not grand strategy

Zhao told audiences at Fudan University that the more plausible explanation is miscalculation. He argues Trump expected a quick, Venezuela‑style “decapitation” that would be politically tidy and profitable; Iran, he says, is an altogether different case — geographically distant, ideologically driven, and large enough that airpower alone is unlikely to produce a rapid regime change. The conflict has already become a war of attrition: it has been reported that U.S. military spending in the first week exceeded $1.3 billion and Washington announced an additional $200 billion in military funding, while the White House delayed a planned visit to Beijing.

Domestic politics, economics and a transactional foreign policy

Zhao warns the campaign risks becoming a domestic political liability for Trump as well as a global economic shock. If the war stretches into the 17–18 weeks some analysts have modeled, it would coincide with U.S. midterm politics and further strain budgets and supply chains. He frames the broader pattern of recent U.S. policy as an attempt to fuse transactional economic measures — tariffs, investment controls — with coercive military action: military pressure to create bargaining leverage. But he also calls that approach unrealistic, noting the blowback from higher oil prices, disrupted trade, and shrinking political support at home.

What this means for China and the world

For Western readers unfamiliar with China’s perspective: Beijing and many China‑watchers view the Iran conflation as a distraction from the immediate mechanics of U.S. decision‑making — misjudgment, hubris, and domestic political calculation — and worry primarily about sanctions, energy shocks and supply‑chain fallout. Zhao points to oil markets as an early warning: futures have spiked from previous lows into triple digits, squeezing national budgets worldwide. So is the Iran war a deliberate tool against China? Chinese analysts say that claim lacks evidence and that the more urgent question is whether U.S. transactionalism plus military coercion will become a lasting feature of great‑power competition — and whether the global economy can absorb the cost.