Authors Elisa Ewers, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies, and Michael Schiffer, Senior Fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, published [an article](https://www.cfr.org/articles/what-the-iran-war-taught-china-about-fighting-the-united-states on the Council of Foreign Relations website headlined “What the Iran War Taught China About Fighting the United States,” which reports that “Iran could not defeat the United States militarily, but it never needed to—and China is taking note. By choking the Strait of Hormuz, spiking energy markets, and running down the clock, Tehran offered Beijing a case study in how to impose costs without seeking victory.”
Not quite as depressive about the state of affairs as neo-con Robert Kagan, the CFR piece nonetheless admits that the U.S. has failed miserably in its war against Iran. “Iran could never win a conventional war with the United States, but it didn’t have to. It simply had to run down the clock, drive up the costs, and survive. For Chinese planners, the Iran war is a case study for what multi-domain warfare should look like.”
Iran is playing an asymmetric game, they argue: “The regime did something few scenarios over the last decades had explored: it allowed its own oil bound for China and elsewhere to transit while shutting down the rest of the outflow through the strait. It choked an economic artery, caused insurance markets to tighten and supply chains to falter.”