The Iran war ceasefire should end Israel’s narrow policy approach to the China factor. It showed that China is embedded in the strategic environment where Israel fights and survives. Beijing was absent from the kinetic arena, yet it was near the center of the non-kinetic one – China’s comfort zone. Israel must develop a China strategy equal to this reality.
It seems obvious that because China buys most of Iran’s oil and the countries have a comprehensive strategic partnership, Beijing has leverage over Tehran’s decisions. After the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement, China also seemed able to mediate where Washington could not.
US President Donald Trump implied as much when he said China had influenced Tehran toward a ceasefire.
But the real issue is not whether China delivers to Iran. It is how China influences the setting that frames Iran’s decisions.
China is often analyzed through a Western lens that expects influence to appear as visible pressure and measurable compliance. Sometimes Beijing does act that way, using economic coercion against state actors, as seen recently through rare-earth restrictions.
But it does not use one fixed method. In environments it considers volatile or resistant to outside control, it prefers to shape the environment around a decision rather than own the decision itself.
Setting up the parameters in which the game pieces must move
That distinction is central to understanding China’s relevance in the Middle East, and it should be Israel’s main lesson from the ceasefire.
This approach has been especially visible in the Middle East. The Saudi-Iran agreement was promoted as China doing what the US couldn’t.
In reality, it rested on Saudi Arabia’s desire for regional calm to pursue national transformation, and its decision to let China preside over the diplomatic moment. China did not create the convergence. It was given the stage.
The rapprochement soon looked less impressive.
Before the war, Saudi leaders urged Trump to strike Iran. After Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia, they reportedly passed Israel-specific targets to hit. The agreement proved only as durable as the parties’ interests – more diplomatic theater than durable mediation.
The ceasefire offered another example of how Beijing operates.
During the war, Beijing called for de-escalation and renewed navigation through Hormuz. After backing Pakistan as mediator, perhaps even nudging it into that role, China joined Islamabad in a five-point ceasefire initiative.
Its importance lay less in the content than in the signal: alignment among key non-Western actors and a diplomatic frame for de-escalation. China also joined Russia in vetoing the Bahrain-backed UN Security Council resolution on Hormuz.
It didn’t force Tehran to accept a ceasefire, but it likely eased the sense of capitulation under international coercion.
By vetoing the resolution, China removed one layer of pressure and helped create a diplomatic setting in which Iran could pause without appearing to submit to a UN-backed mechanism aligned against it.
This is the kind of leverage China prefers: not command, but context. Part of the limit lies in Iran itself. Tehran is willing to absorb extraordinary pain to preserve deterrence and internal legitimacy, so China’s purchase of 90% of its oil does not translate automatically into decisive leverage.
Part of the reason lies in China. Beijing does use coercion when the objective is clear and the consequences manageable. But in the Middle East, it has generally preferred flexibility over commitment. It knows its own record there is mixed.
Moreover, Iran’s Gulf attacks hamstrung China. Its ties with the Gulf are, in many respects, more important than those with Iran. China’s energy security and broader regional position depend heavily on Gulf relationships. Iran’s threats to the Gulf thus limited Beijing’s ability to back Tehran.
The same duality applies to China’s material support for Iran during the war. It provided rhetorical backing and reportedly supplied technical support and components that helped Iran reconstitute missile capabilities, while maintaining plausible deniability by describing such activity as private-sector behavior outside state control. That formula allows China to help sustain Iranian resilience while limiting formal responsibility.
Beijing’s ability to influence the Middle East environment is precisely why it is strategically relevant to Israel. Beijing does not need to direct Tehran to affect Israel’s security. China can shield Iran diplomatically, help it recover materially, and shape the conditions in which wars end, without taking responsibility.
This is influence with Chinese characteristics: less the imposition of decisions than the shaping of the terrain through which decision-making moves, like rocks and mounds of Earth guiding the flow of water down a hill.
After October 7, China’s openly anti-Israel rhetoric and diplomacy made Israel more risk-aware. But this did not result in a strategy. That has to change.
Does China influence the environment in which Israel maneuvers?
Israel has too often treated China as a policy file of transactions. However, because China is a strategic actor operating inside Israel’s wider security environment, Israel needs to move beyond policy to a China strategy, asking how Beijing is shaping the environment where Israel operates. How is it affecting the resilience of hostile actors and the wider security dynamics among Israel’s neighbors?
What emerges from these questions, combined with a serious understanding of China, is a strategy option that turns the Abraham Accords from a normalization framework into a regional strategic architecture featuring integration and connectivity.
Israel should selectively borrow from China’s playbook: shaping the environment in which decisions are made, and mobilizing multiple arenas to do so.
This logic was visible twice in 2024, when Arab states joined in Israel’s defense against Iran’s missile onslaught. In this context, the Abraham Accords become a broader regional architecture of security, commerce, and technological cooperation. This could shape the setting of China’s influence in ways that are less problematic for Israel.
The ceasefire showed that China operates by shaping the environment in which Tehran acts. For Israel, that should catalyze the building of a strategy based on a clear-eyed understanding of how Beijing wields influence. Such a strategy can strengthen Israel’s position, sharpen its regional logic, and improve its ability to maintain effective relations with China in the context of great-power competition.
The writer is the founder and executive Director of SIGNAL Group, an Israel-based think tank focusing on China and the Indo-Pacific.
