China Could Help the US Unlock Iran
It was President Donald Trump who revealed Beijing's secret hand behind the two-week ceasefire with Iran that's drawing to an end on Wednesday, and since then China has taken a more public role in pressuring Iran to negotiate an end to the war.
Last week, it issued additional goals for peace in the Middle East, on top of its five-point peace plan, and called for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen in meetings with Gulf states.
It's not a surprise that China is taking a lead here; it's got a lot of skin in the game.
At stake is the source of roughly a tenth of its crude oil supplies, its carefully cultivated relationships around the Gulf and an opportunity to gain more influence in the region.
It also has a chance to do something the White House can not: stop the war.
Beijing stands to win a major diplomatic victory if it can help end the conflict in a way that satisfies Washington and doesn’t fully alienate Tehran. Such an outcome would add further weight to Trump’s upcoming state visit to China, whose leaders are seeking a reset of the country’s most important relationship.
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China's Top Crude Oil Suppliers in 2025
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China Cares Because of Its Economy
China is a crucial economic and diplomatic ally to Iran, but it's less dependent on the Islamic Republic itself.
While about 13 percent of its oil is believed to come from Iran, China's economy has been better positioned than most to withstand the energy shock of the strait's closure, having stockpiled oil on the assumption that Trump was ready to shake up the global economy in his second term.
But the disruptions in the Gulf-including Iran’s attacks on shipping and the U.S. blockade-have started eating away at China's energy cushion.
Customs data published on Monday showed its oil imports from the Gulf had fallen 25 percent from the year before, according to the Chinese financial magazine Caixin.
China Has Close Ties with Iran's IRGC
China is Iran's largest oil customer, its strongest international backer and perhaps the only nation capable of rebuilding its ravaged cities after the war.
Beijing could claim the fragile ceasefire of the past two weeks as a diplomatic win, thanks in part to its pressure on the Iranian government to negotiate a truce.
The job might have been made harder by the killing of Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in February, but its line to Iran's new leaders remains open.
It's not clear if Beijing views Iran's current leadership in the same way, but it expects continuity in the enduring centrality of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said Tuvia Gering, a China analyst at the Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company Planet Nine.
“With figures like Mojtaba Khamenei closely aligned with the IRGC, China likely assumes the organization will remain the dominant force in Iranian politics,” said Gering, who is also a visiting researcher at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies.
“This is ‘good news' for Beijing, seeing as it has institutionalized ties with the IRGC,” he told Newsweek. “China effectively underwrites the IRGC through its purchase of sanctioned Iranian oil, much of it routed through its state-backed shadow economy.”
China Will Continue To Play a Role
A week after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, President Xi Jinping provided the first hint that Beijing was prepared for a more public role, telling the visiting Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, that the Gulf states should learn to coexist peacefully.
On Monday, Xi told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the Strait of Hormuz should be reopened, in another sign of its competing interests in the Gulf.
“Since the conflict began, China has held an objective, just and balanced position and has been working to help bring about a ceasefire and end to the conflict,” Liu Pengyu, China's embassy spokesperson in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek.
“The root cause of the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz is the military conflict. To solve the issue, the conflict must stop as soon as possible. All parties need to remain calm and exercise restraint. China will continue playing a constructive role,” he said.
Adrian Ang, a researcher with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said China's recent responses were “carefully calibrated.”
“It has condemned the U.S. naval blockade while also trying to push for a diplomatic solution with and via Pakistan. Beijing will not pull out all the stops to pull U.S. chestnuts out of the fire with the Iran war, but it also has no desire to see further escalation-horizontal or vertical,” Ang told Newsweek.
“The measures so far are relatively costless for Beijing and puts it in a good light relative to Washington. And it also helps stabilize bilateral ties leading up to the Beijing visit. Trump also said that Xi agreed to not send weapons to Iran,” he said.
Reached by email, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said: “Under President Trump‘s leadership, Iran has agreed to a ceasefire as we negotiate a broader peace agreement-once more proving Peace through Strength victorious.”
Putting America First
China could intervene further in the conflict to its benefit. By privately incentivizing Iran to sue for peace, it could potentially disperse any clouds of war that may overshadow Trump's state visit next month.
For Tehran, however, Beijing's realist political calculations mean it is far less likely to extract any concrete security guarantees for the safety of its regime, especially if uncompromising factions in Iran's Revolutionary Guard continue to threaten China's more significant economic partners in the region, like Saudi Arabia.
The closer it gets to Trump's visit, the more muted China's public criticism of the U.S. may become.
On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not condemn the U.S. seizure of the Iranian cargo ship Touska-the first of the blockade-and instead voiced concern and called the situation “fragile and complex.”
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U.S. Seizes Sanctioned Iranian Cargo Ship Touska
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“Despite intensifying great power competition, China has over the decades prioritized its relationship with the U.S. over Iran when forced to choose, reflecting the stark asymmetry in their economic importance to Beijing,” said Gering, the Israel-based analyst.
“With so much riding on high-level U.S.-China engagement, including Trump's visit to Beijing, the hierarchy of priorities remains clear, and for China, it is effectively ‘America first,'” he said.
China's longstanding relationship with Iran's military could prove key amid growing signs that the U.S. is negotiating with a divided council in Tehran, contested between moderates and hard-liners.
On Friday, after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” for the remainder of the ceasefire, the Guard closed it again, ostensibly in retaliation over the U.S. blockade.
Araghchi later was openly criticized by Iran's IRGC-affiliated news agencies for failing to faithfully represent the Iranian position.
Trump said in a Truth Social post last week: “China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them…. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks.”
If the strait reopens before he arrives in China next month, it could be Trump who thanks Xi for another timely intervention.
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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 7:12 AM.