After watching the latest rounds of right-wing podcasters intoning that somehow Trump is demon-possessed or out of his mind or fill-in-the-blank crazy conspiracy theory, or “It’s all about the Jews!”, it’d probably be good to broach what is apparently a unique thought to the daily bloviators. When it comes to the “Don-roe Doctrine,” perhaps President Trump actually sees the broader geopolitical realities America has lived under for generations and is trying to do something to ensure that America remains safe and our economy remains robust.
Here’s the frame everyone seems to be missing: Whatever you think about the Iran situation on its own merits, it has to be viewed through a much broader geopolitical prism. U.S. pressure on Iran – and for that matter Venezuela – directly degrades China’s ability to fuel its economy and military buildup on the cheap. China has been hoovering up sanctioned Iranian oil at steep discounts, with Chinese purchases now accounting for roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports and generating an estimated $50-70 billion in petroleum revenues annually for Tehran. That’s $70 billion for the Iranian mullahs to spend on funding Hezbollah and just about every other significant terrorist organization in the Middle East and beyond. That’s funding that has gone directly to killing American citizens, civilian and military. That’s funding that has fueled Iran’s military and nuclear ambitions. And that in turn is oil that fuels China’s economy.
The same playbook runs through Venezuela, where China takes around 80% of oil exports – worth roughly $12-14 billion a year – using shadow fleets, third-country rebranding, and payments routed through small banks to dodge U.S. secondary sanctions. Across Iran, Russia, and Venezuela combined, the House Select Committee on China found that Beijing assembled a strategic petroleum reserve of roughly 1.2 billion barrels by early 2026, acquired at well below market cost – from the very barrels Western sanctions were designed to strand. Squeeze Iran and Venezuela, and you are squeezing China’s discount energy lifeline.
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about Europe. We should dispense with the Europeans whining about U.S. actions against Iran, because it is hollow and laughable. At the peak of the pre-sanctions era, EU countries were doing $27–30 billion a year in trade with Iran. Germany – which has the nerve to lecture Washington about economic coercion – was Iran’s single largest European trading partner, at one point exporting more than $1.5 billion worth of goods to Tehran annually, dominated by machinery and industrial equipment: exactly the dual-use category that can feed a nuclear and missile program.