A War of Disruption:
How the Iran-Israel Conflict Masks a Strategic Play Against China's Rise
By Farhad Omar
In an age where military engagements often obscure more subtle forms of conflict, the Israel-Iran escalation of 2024-2025 may well be remembered not only for its missile exchanges and battlefield optics, but for the grander geopolitical realignment it quietly facilitated. On the surface, this conflict is framed as a continuation of longstanding regional animosities, Tehran’s ideological enmity toward Tel Aviv, Israel’s right to self-defence, and the tragic echoes of Gaza and Hezbollah. But look deeper and one sees a broader, more deliberate design: a calculated disruption engineered to fracture China's westward momentum and slow its global ascendancy through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
It is a thesis that begins not on the battlefields of the Levant, but in the boardrooms of Beijing, the cornfields of the American Midwest, and the halls of Capitol Hill. The levers of war and peace, trade and diplomacy, are today pulled not simply to protect sovereignty or punish adversaries, but to manipulate the arteries of global commerce and power. The Iran-Israel war is, in this light, not just a regional feud. It is a war of corridors, a war of routes, roads, and rail that could define the future of global hegemony.
The Crumbling Edifice of U.S. Dominance
The United States, once the unchallenged architect of the global order, now teeters on a precipice of self-inflicted decline. Internally, it faces a toxic blend of legislative gridlock, soaring debt, and fraying social cohesion. The budget bill currently debated in Congress threatens to deepen the debt ceiling crisis, potentially breaching $36 trillion by 2026. Analysts warn this could trigger cascading effects: bond yield spikes, sovereign credit downgrades, and rising inflationary pressure.
More insidiously, confidence in the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency is no longer sacrosanct. In 2025, China signed over a dozen yuan-based oil trade agreements with Gulf states, while BRICS nations formalized the groundwork for a multi-currency settlement platform. The dollar’s supremacy, long underpinned by petro-politics and global trust, is now visibly eroding.
Washington, recognizing its narrowing economic lead, has shifted from soft power to strategic containment. Military alliances are reactivated, sanctions weaponised, and diplomatic ties reduced to transactional metrics. But while China builds ports, railroads, and solar farms, the United States has too often defaulted to exporting arms and ideology.
China’s 2025 Milestone: From Factory to Founder
As the United States questions its fiscal and political vitality, China in 2025 has arrived at the threshold of an economic milestone. It has transitioned decisively from the factory of the world to its laboratory. Beijing's Made in China 2025 strategy, once scoffed at as state propaganda, has now borne fruit. In artificial intelligence, China leads in commercial applications. In green technology, it manufactures over 70% of the world’s solar panels and battery cells. In the strategically vital field of rare earths, it not only dominates extraction but has nearly monopolised global refining and processing chains.
Moreover, China has cemented its influence in critical nodes of global trade. It operates or owns stakes in dozens of ports from Gwadar in Pakistan to Piraeus in Greece. It’s Digital Silk Road, extending cloud infrastructure and undersea cables across Africa and Southeast Asia, presents a stark contrast to Western digital monopolies that falter in transparency and inclusion.
In short, China has become not merely a participant in globalisation, but its chief engineer.
IMEC and the Corridor Calculus
Amid this shifting balance, the West unveiled a bold initiative: the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced at the G20 Summit in Delhi in September 2023. Designed as a counterweight to China’s BRI, IMEC promised a new logistics lifeline that would connect Indian ports to the Arabian Peninsula and then, via rail, through Jordan and Israel to European ports.
It was, in many ways, a compelling vision. Unlike the BRI, often criticised for debt dependency and opaque governance, IMEC was to be a democratic corridor, transparent, inclusive, and economically sound. But its success hinged on a fragile geopolitical consensus: Saudi Arabia’s warming to Israel, stable Gulf politics, a pacified Gaza, and Jordan’s quiet cooperation.
Then came the war. In the weeks following the October 7 attacks, the region slipped into chaos. The Gaza Strip turned into a humanitarian disaster. Hezbollah activated its northern front. The Red Sea became a battleground as Houthi militants targeted commercial shipping. Iran, ever the shadow actor, stoked regional fires through its network of proxies.
As rockets streaked across the skies from Haifa to Damascus, the IMEC map began to disintegrate. Saudi Arabia, once on the cusp of normalising ties with Israel, backed away. Jordan distanced itself publicly. Haifa port, a key node, partially owned by India’s Adani Group, came under threat. What was meant to be a corridor of peace transformed into a corridor of uncertainty.
Disruption by Design?
The pattern here is not incidental. It is strategic. In freezing IMEC’s progress, the war has achieved what no formal negotiation could: it has removed a credible Western alternative to BRI from the table, at least temporarily. With Gulf states turning inward and Israel’s domestic priorities focused on security, the U.S.-backed corridor faces delay, if not derailment.
This opens the door for China to reassert itself as the indispensable partner in regional development. Beijing has played the long game, non-interventionist, economically dependable, and diplomatically ambidextrous. It maintains formal relations with both Iran and Israel, sells drones to Saudi Arabia while funding ports in Iran, and offers trade without conditionality.
By contrast, Washington’s binary approach, friend or foe, ally or adversary, now seems dated. As IMEC founders on the rocks of Middle Eastern conflict, BRI continues its sprawl, re-routing where necessary, pausing when prudent, but always building.
Economic Fragility and the Agricultural Backlash
Back in the American heartland, the implications of this geopolitical chess match are quietly devastating. Farmers in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska have seen sharp declines in export orders from China. Soybean contracts, once locked in multi-year deals, have dried up. China has turned to Brazil and Argentina, hedging its food security against American volatility.
This agricultural disengagement is no accident. It is a signal. Beijing no longer trusts the continuity of American supply chains or the predictability of its policies. Trade, once a stabilizing pillar of Sino-American ties, is now a lever of leverage. The Midwest, heavily dependent on commodity exports, becomes collateral damage in a global economic realignment.
To compound this, America’s aggressive deportation policies are beginning to hollow out the labour force. Fields go unharvested. Construction slows. Industrial plants struggle to fill essential roles. The immigrant workforce, long the backbone of America’s physical economy, is being purged in the name of national identity.
China, meanwhile, automates. Its smart ports in Shenzhen and Ningbo handle record volumes with AI-driven logistics. Its freight trains, traversing Eurasia, deliver goods in record time. It is not that China is immune to labour challenges, it is that China plans for them.
Manufacturing Sovereignty vs Military Spend
There is also a contrast in investment logic. China spends on factories. America spends on aircraft carriers. The $850 billion defence budget, now poised to rise further under the guise of "protecting allies," devours federal resources that might have modernised infrastructure, reshored manufacturing, or revolutionised education.
Even the technology war, the chip embargoes, export bans, and tech blacklists, has done little to slow China’s tech ambitions. Domestically designed semiconductors now run key systems. Quantum research is state-funded and aggressively scaled. The U.S. may win skirmishes in export control, but it appears to be losing the war of production capacity.
A War of Maps, Not Just Missiles
All of this brings us back to the map. For the first time in a century, the world’s logistics, finance, and data flows are being redrawn. Control of these flows defines power. The Iran-Israel conflict, in this context, is not just a firefight, it is a firewall. It blocks the convergence of interests that might have created a serious Western rival to the BRI. It distracts the global public with kinetic warfare while the economic battlefield is silently rearranged.
It is telling that the U.S. response to the conflict included no serious attempt at de-escalation. Instead, it committed more military aid to Israel, signalled support for Israeli offensives, and failed to restrain regional allies. The chaos, for some in Washington, is useful. It justifies defence spending, delays IMEC, and keeps China’s progress under scrutiny.
But it is a short-term game. Wars may stall trade, but they rarely stop it. And China’s strategy has always been endurance. As the West fights over which corridor to claim, China builds three more.
The Quiet Reckoning
In the end, the question is not whether IMEC or BRI will win. It is whether the world will continue to tolerate a model where infrastructure is politicised, and peace is contingent upon geopolitical alignment. The Iran-Israel war is not just a regional tragedy. It is a warning.
If the goal is a multipolar, interconnected world, we must recognise that the current chaos is not accidental; it is manufactured, maintained, and, for some, monetised. True development will require more than treaties. It will require vision, trust, and the courage to resist distraction.
China, for its part, is not standing still. It is building quietly, steadily, and globally. The West must now decide whether to build alongside or keep lighting fires in the corridors of progress.
In the 21st century, power belongs not to those who dominate borders, but to those who connect them. And in that war, the victor may already be marching.