I didn’t support President Donald Trump’s Iran strikes. Much like the late Charlie Kirk, I believe regime change in Iran could very likely make the world less stable by triggering a refugee crisis, revenge terrorist attacks, and civil war among the Iranian people.
But the strikes happened, and that doesn’t mean everything will inevitably end up worse. In fact, if the next few weeks and months go well, we could see benefits that will make me reconsider my skepticism.
I disagreed with Trump’s justifications for the strikes — that it was necessary to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program and dismantle its terrorist networks. But while we debate those justifications, something else is already happening that may matter more in the long run, especially regarding our most consequential adversary, China.
THE IRAN STRIKE IS ABOUT WEAKENING CHINA
How? Because the subtext of Operation Epic Fury, and the Venezuela attack before it, is that Trump is weakening China by targeting its access to energy.
Despite U.S. sanctions, China was the top customer for both Venezuelan and Iranian oil. The Chinese bought nearly all of Iran’s oil exports and half of Venezuela’s, and these countries together accounted for almost 20% of China’s average oil purchases. China imports another 4.57 million barrels of crude oil a day from various Persian Gulf countries through the Iranian-controlled Strait of Hormuz.
That means in less than two months, Trump has threatened a significant portion of the energy powering China’s manufacturing sector, military industrial complex, and AI development — in other words, the very sectors that most threaten American economic and national security.
It is no wonder then that China isn’t thrilled at the news out of Tehran, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying it was “highly concerned” by Saturday’s attacks and issuing calls for a ceasefire.
With former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei out of power, China’s last major provider of oil is Russia, a partner bleeding itself dry on the battlefields of Ukraine. Its last major ally in the Western Hemisphere is Cuba, which many believe will be Trump’s next target. Step by step, China is being isolated.
This energy shift further benefits America, because with Venezuela and Iran either moving off the oil market, or even potentially joining America’s sphere of influence, the world will turn to America as the dominant energy provider.
That’s because restricting global energy production doesn’t reduce consumption. It simply moves the market. The U.S. under Trump’s America First agenda has become the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas, meaning America will remain the world’s go-to energy provider. And the fuel we’re replacing isn’t just hostile, it’s filthy.
Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude oil is 1.5 times dirtier than light crude oil on average. The country’s oil had the second-highest methane intensity and the highest carbon intensity among oil-producing countries in 2023 and 2024, respectively. A Harvard Department of Environmental Health study found that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, which burn “waste” gas in a process known as “gas flaring,” are singularly responsible for unleashing toxic cancer-causing pollutants.
On the other hand, American LNG emits about 20% less CO2 than oil and 40% less than coal. With Venezuela and Iran reeling, the world may soon have few other options but to embrace America’s cleaner supply.
China has known for decades that foreign oil dependency was its strategic vulnerability. That’s why it aggressively cornered the global solar panel manufacturing market and tripled its nuclear capacity in a decade. China surely wasn’t expecting Trump to spring this kind of energy trap, but it has still been trying to engineer its way out of precisely this type of dilemma for some time.
That means the energy dominance strategy that is working today has a clock on it. The long game requires America to do in renewables, nuclear, and next-generation batteries what it did in oil and gas: Dominate the market, set the terms, and make the world dependent on American supply rather than Chinese manufacturing.
TRUMP’S IRAN WAR COULD GIVE US LEVERAGE OVER CHINA AND TAIWAN
I remain cautious about where the Iran strikes lead. But I’m no longer dismissive of what they’ve already accomplished. Trump has identified energy as America’s most powerful strategic weapon, and he’s using it.
Having spent years working on clean energy policy, the biggest question I now see is whether Washington has the vision to extend that dominance into the energy technologies that will define the next 50 years — before Beijing does it first.
Chet Love is the Managing Partner of Cornerstone Group International. He also served as Director of Policy and Legal Counsel for SolarCity (now Tesla).
