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A confidential U.S. intelligence report circulating within the Pentagon has concluded that China is systematically exploiting the war in Iran to extend its advantage over the United States across military, economic and diplomatic fronts, according to an exclusive Washington Post report citing two U.S. officials who have read the document. The finding lands as President Donald Trump opens high-stakes talks with Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The assessment, produced this week by the Joint Staff's intelligence directorate for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised alarm inside the Pentagon about the mounting geopolitical costs of Washington's standoff with Tehran. It arrives at a delicate moment: Trump is now meeting with Xi as the Iran conflict grinds on far longer than the administration had initially projected.
On the military front, the report finds that the war has depleted the munitions stockpiles of both the United States and its Arab allies. Some of those allies have turned to Beijing to replenish their arsenals since the fighting began, the document says, a development that represents a concrete gain for China's defense industry at a moment when Washington is stretched thin.
The report uses what analysts call a "DIME" framework, assessing China's response to the Iran conflict through four instruments of state power: diplomatic, informational, military and economic.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which followed the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, has handed Beijing an additional opening. According to the report, China has moved to assist countries around the world struggling to meet their energy needs in the wake of the blockage, a corridor through which roughly a third of the world's seaborne oil and gas normally passes.
The energy disruption has allowed Beijing to position itself as a reliable supplier and partner at a moment when American credibility as a stabilizing force is under pressure.
The assessment also describes a deliberate Chinese information campaign built on the conflict's unpopularity. Beijing has incorporated widespread criticism of the war into its public messaging, characterizing the conflict as "illegal" and using the framing to chip away at the image of the United States as a responsible steward of the rules-based international order, the report says.
The Pentagon sought to distance itself from the report's implications. Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said that "assertions claiming the global balance of power have shifted towards any nation other than the United States of America are fundamentally false."
The rebuttal came as Trump's visit to China, originally scheduled for earlier in the spring before being delayed by the Iran war, proceeds against a backdrop of acute geopolitical uncertainty. Trump is expected to press Xi on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and on reaching a viable end to the conflict, even as the intelligence community's own assessment suggests China has little incentive to rush either outcome.
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