“For their part, the Chinese offer banking outside the reach of the United States government, shipping companies that lend their flags to Iranian vessels, access to their ports, and easy entry to the international drug and weapons traffic.”

This is probably what worries me most about Iran. China is making a big claim there and it really is a “soft” form of colonialism. There will come a time when Chinese warships will be based in Iranian ports, making the bombing of Iran even more difficult lest we accidentally hit a Chinese warship. Remember, during the war in Kosovo we “accidentally” bombed the Chinese embassy and the Chinese were not too pleased about it. I doubt they would feel too good about us sinking some of their warships in an Iranian port, even though we assured them that their ships were not our real targets. The Chinese may also want to provide a naval escort for their tankers or merchant ships to and from Iran if the political situation continues to deteriorate in that country (as well as in the Gulf in General). The Chinese also provide their flagged vessels to the Iranians which would make our sanctions against them pretty useless, almost as useless as the “Oil-for-Food” sanctions we tried to impose on Saddam Hussein.

But assymetric warfare works both ways. There are many ways we can destabilize the Iranian regime, such as assisting Iranian and Kurdish rebel groups with whatever they need, including weapons, money, and military training. But what about the Chinese? There are lots of ways to hurt their economy through assymetric warfare. How about we actually buy the opium being grown in Afghanistan and then flood the Chinese market with a lot of cheap heroine? It could all be done very quietly, using the vast borders with China to funnel the drugs into the country. I’m sure the Vietnamese would love to help us, especially if it meant hurting the Chinese while making a profit at the same time. Ironically, this sounds a lot like Colonel Oliver North’s arrangement he had with the Iranians while trying to fund the Contras in the 1980s. Say what you will about North’s program, but it worked. No reason why something like that can’t work again, especially since China was once devestated by opium as far back as the mid-nineteenth century with the British. A huge influx of cheap heroine into China could cause massive social and health problems, something that could take years to deal with.

Time to be creative with the Chinese. Time to also show them that two can play at this game. And if we do NOT want to play, then we are about to hand them control over the Persian Gulf, and the economies of the Western World will not be able to survive that.