China and Russia in the Persian Gulf

When the Chinese tanker, Rich Starry, defied the U.S. blockade April 14 by going through the Strait of Hormuz, it redefined the blockade. This easy transit may have had something to do with a statement, the day before, by China’s defense minister, Admiral Dong Jun, at the beginning of the U.S. blockade: “Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honor them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and it is open for us.”

Although the U.S.’s, under Donald “Steal the Oil” Trump, sole purpose seems to be to corner the planet’s energy market (vide Trump’s Venezuelan escapades and more recent Iranian ones) this program has several fatal flaws, most especially “upending an emerging détente with China,” as the New York Times put it April 14 and, even more inanely, fails to take into account that U.S. global oil strangulation has boosted Russian energy profits into the stratosphere, so that, if Moscow wants, it can sell discounted oil to Beijing. Oh, and also, China sends its solar tech all over the world, recently, most notably, to Cuba, where U.S. secretary of state Marco “Regime Change” Rubio convinced el jefe to choke off all energy supplies, something at which the Kremlin, being blockade-averse for historical reasons rooted in the horrifying siege of Leningrad, responded by sending a huge tanker loaded with oil to Havana. And another is on the way.

Meanwhile in mid-April, the Iran Observer announced on X: “China Warships in Hormuz!” This post included photos of PLA Navy ships, though of course they could have been anywhere. But if the Iran Observer is accurate, that may account for the ease with which on April 14, the Chinese tanker and three other Iran-linked ships transited the Strait. Or that could have had something to do with the six submarines, two nuclear, that Moscow plunked down near the Strait of Hormuz, back on April 5. Whatever the cause, China and Russia are in the Person Gulf, but both they and western media apparently wish to be very discreet about it – though for nearly opposite reason. The Chinese and the Russians because they do everything they can discreetly, while western media, on the other hand, wants to hype U.S. power, and stories about the Eurasian military giants’ presence in the Persian Gulf don’t do that.

How much money is Moscow making in the oil trade thanks to Trump’s ill-considered and barbaric blockade? $117.46 per barrel as of April 14 – a big surge caused largely by Don Coreleone in the white house throttling Hormuz. Prior to February 28, when Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took it into their heads to attack Iran, Russian Urals crude went for $57 to $58 per barrel. Over the course of early March, the price spiked, and has been spiking ever since, so that Moscow is now making money hand over fist. So’s Tehran. And just in case the Trump dimwits’ plan to starve China of oil actually starts to work, the Kremlin has jumped in, as yours truly predicted recently in these pages and, despite its recent cutoff of all gasoline exports, offered to lend China a helping hand. “Russia can plug any oil supply gap and help China…withstand U.S. ‘aggressive adventures,’ Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said,” RT reported April 15. “Lavrov’s remarks came after U.S. Treasury Secretary [and primo airhead] Scott Bessent warned on Tuesday that China is ‘not going to be able to get their oil…not Iranian oil.” Bessent also boasted, erroneously (surprise!) that Beijing’s ships would not pass through Hormuz, an idiocy that may have prompted Trump’s proclamation the next day that he was opening the Strait “for China.”

In fact, Trump announced that he would “PERMANENTLY reopen” the waterway “after Beijing supposedly agreed not to send weapons to Iran,” RT reported April 15. Note the word “supposedly” in this headline. As a regular reader of RT, I can tell you that that is the first time in some years I have seen that word in a headline. So the take from official Moscow might be skepticism? Ya think? And don’t you think Moscow has a more informed view of Beijing’s activities and needs in the Persian Gulf than Trump? Well, you could say many people do and you’d be correct, but the Kremlin especially. Russia, China and Iran have an alliance, the genuine article. Not just some marriage of convenience, like the deformities we see between the U.S. and its proxies. The notion that Chinese president Xi Jinping promised Donald Trump to stop arming a vital ally, with whom China has a relationship of alive, tested loyalty and to whom China has given planeloads of armament as that ally was beaten bloody by Israel and the U.S., and as that ally fought back valiantly, with China and Russia at its side – well, that notion is preposterous.

Maybe the hilarious internet memes about blockading a blockade shamed Trump, or maybe the brainless apercus of Scott Bessent and voluble nitwit Florida Republican senator Rick Scott, who announced on a talk show that he was so keen on busting up China’s economy that he didn’t care if the blockade caused high prices here – maybe the nonpareil observations of these morons about their comfort with Trump causing a worldwide depression alarmed the president. Or maybe he found even more alarming Iran’s minatory statement that it is waiting for the ceasefire to end before making “the blockade extremely painful for the U.S.,” according to a military source quoted by Iran Observer on X April 15. “All imports and exports in the region will be banned. Ports throughout the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman will be targeted. The Red Sea will also be blockaded, and experience shows that the U.S. Navy will not be able to reopen it.”

Well, that’s enough to sober up even the most intoxicated narcissist. Because yes, that’s exactly what experience shows, namely, when the Houthis shut down the Red Sea in solidarity with the bombed, poisoned, injured, traumatized, destitute, murdered and homeless people of Gaza, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the U.S. navy or Israel’s mesmerizing tech reopening it. And they tried. But alea iacta est. Geography and Houthi grit stumped the American/Israeli aggressors, who, it turns out, are much better at slaughtering civilians, firebombing cities and torturing the next generation – as Israel has done in Gaza, where its military pollutants and chemicals, to which pregnant women have been exposed, have led to a huge cohort of infants born with agonizing deformities. That’s certainly what Israel is good at, and the U.S. is no slouch in that department either. So maybe Trump had some vague sense of his military’s limitations and what these deficits mean, namely that when faced with actual, competent, well-armed, highly committed troops, failure looms as a distinct possibility. Much easier to blow up a girl’s school and prestigious universities in Iran or to incinerate hospitals in Gaza.

In four weeks, Trump sojourns to Beijing, a journey most portentous for U.S./China relations, the American economy, the Empire’s continued global reach and for the boss of bosses personally. Suffice it to say, if Trump flubs this, due to his half-wit underlings’ or moronic members of the uniparty’s oracular pronouncements on the wretched U.S. blockade of Hormuz, he thoroughly tanks his “legacy.” And that legacy lately skates on thin ice. There’s Venezuela – truthfully or not, he gets to claim a big win there. There’s Gaza, where he can say at least he reduced the blood-letting, unlike Genocide Joe Biden, who was apparently happy to let the Israelis turn the entire enclave into a humongous crypt. But that’s about it. If he permits Bessent, Scott, two-faced J.D. Vance with his contortions about the spirituality of war or any of their ilk bust up his chance to make nice in Beijing, there goes the Trump political brand, up in smoke.

So the Trump/Xi confab is stupendously significant, especially for Trump. But the Iran War gums up the works. Assuming the white house honcho truly understands this, and there are omens that he does, he would want to wind down hostilities pronto – something which, in fact, he’s been trying to do for some time. Somebody should have told him this misbegotten war entailed fighting the Russia/China/Iran alliance – but even if they had, he likely would have proceeded with his arrant nonsense anyway, because no one among the nincompoops and cuckoo birds he’s surrounded with had any appreciation of the depth, tenacity, intelligence and sterling commitment of the Eurasian union. Indeed, few of our educated elites appreciated it either, due to the pervasive vapidities of western media. So unlucky Trump rushed in where angels fear to tread, only to wake up later, horrified at what he had done and desperate to undo it. I don’t say this much about things Trump, but in this case, we better hope he succeeds.

The post China and Russia in the Persian Gulf appeared first on CounterPunch.org.