BEIJING: China has expressed its anger over Israeli-US strikes on Iran but, despite hits to its oil imports, will not risk its interests by confronting Washington and helping its long-standing partner, analysts say.<\/p>\n
The war in the Middle East has sparked global fears of an energy supply crunch, with traffic in the vital Strait of Hormuz blocked.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday they had \u201ccomplete control\u201d of the waterway as it kept up its missile and drone barrages across the Gulf.<\/p>\n
China, a net importer of oil, is one of several major Asian economies that depend on the narrow strait for energy.<\/p>\n
However, experts say strategic stockpiles will help Beijing endure short-term disruptions, allowing it to pursue other diplomatic priorities.<\/p>\n
Looming ahead is a high-stakes summit in China between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump, which the White House says will begin on March 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iran crisis is unlikely to derail the Trump-Xi summit unless the United States launches a sweeping crackdown on Iran-China (oil) flows,\u201d Dan Wang, China Director for the Eurasia Group, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeijing views Iran as a strategic partner rather than a military ally,\u201d said Wang.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina also values its relationship with other Gulf states, making direct military support beyond rhetoric highly unlikely,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING: China has expressed its anger over Israeli-US strikes on Iran but, despite hits to its oil imports, will not risk its interests by confronting Washington and helping its long-standing partner, analysts say. The war in the Middle East has sparked global fears of an energy supply crunch, with traffic in the vital Strait of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94632,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94615\/revisions\/94632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}