In return, Iran has received access to Chinese surveillance technology, encrypted communications systems resistant to interception, drone components, and satellite reconnaissance capabilities that no other power would have provided under the weight of international sanctions. One concrete example: access to BeiDou, China’s GPS equivalent, explains why Iranian strikes have been significantly more precise than last year, when the United States had blocked their access to GPS. Equally telling is the presence off the Omani coast of the Chinese vessel Liaowang-1 — a state-of-the-art ship dedicated to signals intelligence (SIGINT) and maritime and aerial intelligence gathering, with a sensor range of 6,000 kilometers. In exchange, China enjoys guaranteed access to natural resources at preferential prices — a convenient arrangement for an Iran that has lived under Western sanctions for 47 years. Today, 85–90% of Iranian oil exports flow to China.

One of the most persistent analytical errors among Western commentators is the assumption that a war in the Middle East automatically harms China too. The surface logic seems sound: disruption of the Strait of Hormuz means disruption of global energy flows, and roughly 40% of China’s oil imports pass through it. In reality, Iran has not only continued exporting oil and gas to China throughout the conflict — at prices below international market rates — but exports have actually increased. The discount relative to Brent crude sits between 10 and 30 percent. While Europe pays record prices for energy and the United States draws down its strategic reserves, China imports cheap Iranian oil without major interruptions — the only major importing power whose Hormuz flows have remained undisturbed.

And yet China has condemned the American-Israeli strikes from day one, consistently called for peace, and today positions itself as the only credible mediator. A few hundred kilometers from the Iranian front, Beijing is simultaneously mediating the Afghan-Pakistani conflict, reinforcing its image as the sole great power guided by diplomacy, peace, and international law.

The Fertilizer Crisis: The Second, Invisible Front

Beyond the hydrocarbon crisis generated by this war, there is a far less discussed crisis quietly taking shape: fertilizers. The world’s largest producing countries — China, the United States, India, and Russia — dominate the global supply of agricultural nutrients. China leads in total production and nitrogen; Russia, Canada, and Morocco dominate potassium and phosphate exports. The system was built on the assumption that no single actor would simultaneously control and restrict supply. Today, that assumption has collapsed on three fronts at once.

The first shock comes from China. In the early months of 2022, it exported 950,000 tonnes of urea per quarter. By 2025, that figure had collapsed to 13,000 tonnes — a reduction of over 98 percent. Phosphate exports fell 18 percent in the same year, and just four days ago, the suspension of nitrogen-potassium blend exports was announced. The official justification remains domestic supply security, but the effect on quantities available to international markets is unambiguous.

The second shock comes from the Gulf region, which supplies approximately 34–35% of global urea stocks, 25% of ammonia, 18% of DAP and MAP, and — the most alarming figure — 45% of the world’s sulfur, essential to phosphate fertilizers. The Strait of Hormuz, effectively closed to all countries allied with the United States and Israel, is the route through which three of the world’s top ten urea exporters deliver their production. Attacks on gas infrastructure in Qatar and Iran have reduced ammonia and urea output; India is currently operating at 70% of its required gas supply, losing approximately 800,000 tonnes of fertilizer per month. Factories in Bangladesh have shuttered entirely, amounting to an annual loss of 3.7 million tonnes. The sulfur shortage is particularly severe: sulfur enters the composition of MAP, DAP, SSP, and TSP — and 45% of global stock came from this region.

The third shock comes from Europe, which is operating at 75% of its 2022 nitrogen production capacity, owing to the high energy prices generated by the war in Ukraine.

Since the conflict began, official analysis has focused on urea, whose price has surged by more than $230 per tonne — approximately 50% — in a matter of weeks, climbing from $482.50/t FOB Egypt on February 27 to $720/t on March 17. Ammonia prices rose by $115/t, or 24%, over the same period. What has largely gone unnoticed amid this chaos is the phosphate risk — phosphates being essential for soybean cultivation, one of the foundational crops of global food production. Even before the conflict, phosphate and sulfur stocks were already under pressure: sulfur prices were hitting record highs driven by mining industry demand, Russian exports were constrained by sanctions, and China was curtailing phosphate deliveries for domestic consumption. Add to this the 2023 American tariffs on Moroccan phosphate and the broader tariffs implemented by the Trump administration, which further reduced imports.

The impact will not be uniform. The United States is partially shielded on nitrogen through solid domestic production and large advance stockpiles imported from Russia. Prices remain elevated, however, due to competition with export markets — American producers are bidding against the rest of the world for a limited supply, which drives up domestic prices as well. On phosphate, the vulnerability is more acute: a significant portion of stocks is locked beyond Hormuz, and Chinese restrictions reduce globally available quantities. South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, and Australia will absorb the hardest blow — especially economies where farmers have no financial reserves, no credit, and no insurance. There, a season without fertilizer doesn’t mean tighter margins. It means no harvest.

There is a well-documented historical correlation, identified by researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute, between global food prices and political instability. When the FAO Food Price Index crosses certain thresholds, protests reliably follow. Egypt in 1977, Egypt again in 2011, Syria, Tunisia, the 2007–2008 riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, Mozambique — behind each of them lies a food price shock. Even the French Revolution was ignited by similar pressures. If fertilizer prices rise another 15–20% from current levels, as market analysts estimate, the transmission to global food prices will be direct and swift.

Assuming that fertilizer restrictions are being calculated strategically — a hypothesis that cannot yet be ruled out — then China (and Russia) control not only global energy supply, but global agricultural inputs as well. Beijing’s simultaneous control of energy and food, achieved without declaring a single war, without occupying a single square kilometer of territory, while actively championing peace, represents a form of structural power for which the West has no formulated doctrine of response.

Conclusions and Projections

Several predictions can be offered with a reasonable degree of confidence. First: the Americans have not yet been offered a face-saving exit from this geopolitical disaster, and so the war will not end in the near term, despite Donald Trump’s contradictory statements — designed, as they are, to manipulate oil markets. Second: regardless of how the military conflict concludes, China will emerge with a stronger position both vis-à-vis Iran and in broader international politics. Any negotiation involving even partial sanctions relief will have to pass, formally or informally, through Beijing’s and Moscow’s approval. Third: the pressure on global food systems will not dissipate once the conflict stabilizes. Fertilizer production capacities are not rebuilt quickly, and China has no immediate incentive to resume exports at pre-2022 levels. Fourth: despite the rhetoric about strategic sovereignty, the European economic model will remain, over the medium term, unstable and acutely vulnerable to external shocks. Fifth: the Trump administration will be penalized for this war at the November elections. High hydrocarbon prices and the fertilizer deficit will translate into inflation and eroding international legitimacy — consequences that have always irritated the American electorate. And the broader conclusion remains: the war launched by the American-Israeli alliance has exposed the vulnerabilities of global supply chains to actors designated as enemies of the West, and it heralds a systemic crisis of lasting duration.

By Daria Gusa