No. of Recommendations: 1
Before the U.S. gets into a proxy shooting war with Iranian clients in the Middle East (if that's where we end up), our allies want to know that we've at least explored every easy option to resolve it diplomatically. And that they have cover with their electorate so that none of their political opposition can come in and say that they (or their American allies) missed an opportunity to solve this diplomatically.
Militarily the only allies that matter are France, the UK, Italy and India. Of those 4 only India is the one you have to make any kinds of asks of China to so as to maintain niceties. Nobody else has any kind of naval or strike assets in the area.
It may indeed be a vanishingly small chance that Chia will pick up the phone and tell Tehran to knock it off, or even tell them to talk to the Americans. But you have to make the trivial effort to at least ask China to do it, and then repeat the ask in public when it fails, so that you've done your due diligence before considering other options.
They should do this just so the Foggy Bottom people can claim they're doing something, but it won't amount to anything.
Of course they're likely to tell you to pound sand. But you don't assume it, and not even bother to check.
China's strategic incentive is to encourage the disruption of shipping lanes when it concerns goods not bound from or headed to their ports, and they're doing that around the globe.
