What Beijing is learning from the Iran war

What is China learning from the U.S. war in Iran, which as of today has no end in sight? Former senior analyst Julia Curlee retired from the CIA in May. She served in the agency’s China Mission Center and as Director for Intelligence Programs in the National Security Council under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump in his second term.

I started off by asking Julia about whether China would be incentivized to grab Taiwan because of the United States’ lowered stockpile of Patriots and THAAD missile interceptors. It will currently take “three or more years from today to return to prewar inventory levels,” according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Julia told me that China is “not as tactically minded as, say, other U.S. adversaries like Russia. They’re not looking for every little opportunity to launch a war of aggression, as the Russians did against Ukraine,” she told me. “I don’t think they would throw away [their] meticulous plans for a short-term opportunity.”

She said there is one school of thought that Beijing will invade Taiwan when the U.S. is weakened or distracted. But another school of thought believes that Beijing will invade when China is strong and ready. “They’re gonna hedge down all of their possible bets,” she said. “They’re watching the United States commit what they see as strategic suicide, so why interfere with the U.S. when it’s doing that? Wait until U. S. power further diminishes. Wait until additional Chinese weapons systems are developed that give the parity with the U.S. They’re rolling out power projection capabilities, including their own carrier fleets. So, they’re patient. They’re taking their time and I personally am more in the ‘China will go when it thinks [a seizure of Taiwan] in the bag.’”

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a lesson that cuts both ways for China, she said. “The cost of denying is just so much less than the cost of opening... Taiwan could achieve a similar cost differential, where cheap drones, mines, and other asymmetric weapons could deny access to the [Taiwan] strait. Obviously, that would be a huge problem for a country that needs to launch one of the largest amphibious invasions since D-Day and that hasn’t fought a war since the late 1970s.” But Beijing could also channel Tehran by imposing a blockade against the U.S. Navy. “It just depends what kind of military operations Beijing is thinking it wanted to impose.”

I asked her about whether Xi Jinping’s military purge increases the odds that China speeds up an invasion. “I’m glad we don’t have to worry about that problem in the United States,” she quipped.

Then she went on to say Xi’s stance is that control over the military is one of the most important jobs of the Chinese Communist Party chairman. “The constant threat of purging will make senior leaders very hesitant to not tell the leader what they want to hear, to follow a phrase. And it could definitely set them back.”

But a countervailing pressure is Xi himself, who has also shown deep patience. “While Taiwan and the closing of what is basically the Chinese Civil War and the finishing off of this business — that he said cannot be passed along from generation to generation — is extremely important to him, he also knows that he’s president for life. And so he probably has some runway left.”

My paid subscribers will be able to scroll down and watch the second half of our video — which gets into lessons from Ukraine, the Russia/Iran nexus, and Taiwan’s vulnerabilities and strengths. (And don’t forget about my YouTube channel, follow me there too for more content.)

I will share one paywalled remark though, because it is so important for a broad audience to know about. “For decades,” Julia said, “Taiwan has treated security assistance in cooperation with the U.S. as if they’re buying intervention insurance, rather than buying actual capability.”

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