SpaceWar.com reports: “China has been able to do little more than stand back and watch as war between its key partner Iran and Israel harms its hard-fought leverage in the Middle East, analysts say.

Beijing has sought to frame itself as a mediator in the region, facilitating a 2023 rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and portraying itself as a more neutral actor in the Israel-Palestinian conflict than its rival the United States.

And its position as the largest purchaser of Iranian oil has served as a crucial lifeline for Tehran as its economy is battered by crippling international sanctions.

But as Israel and Iran engaged in an unprecedented exchange of attacks and the United States struck key targets on Iranian soil in the past week, Beijing has offered little beyond calls for de-escalation.

‘Beijing has offered Tehran no real help — just rhetoric that paints China as the principled alternative while it stays safely on the sidelines,’ Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told AFP.

China, he said, ‘sticks to rhetoric — condemnations, UN statements, talk of ‘dialogue’ — because over-promising and under-delivering would spotlight its power-projection limits’.

‘The result is a conspicuously thin response that underscores how little real heft China brings to Iran when the shooting starts.’…”