Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

‘Don’t Want To Flirt With Them’: Peter Schweizer Explains How Trump’s Iran Strikes May Cripple China

Screenshot/Rumble/Fox News

Journalist Peter Schweizer appeared on Fox News Wednesday and explained how President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran could potentially cripple another U.S. adversary — China.

Schweizer appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” just four days after the U.S. and Israel jointly struck the Islamic theocracy, killing its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking Iranian officials. The journalist suggested that the U.S. operation, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, may have “ripple effects” that become “tidal waves in China,” as the Communist Party-controlled country relies heavily on Iranian oil and was a critical strategic partner of the Ayatollah’s regime.

“Any time you have these kinds of military operations that are taking place, they have ripple effects,” Schweizer told host Jesse Watters. “These ripples are actually tidal waves in China. Think about it. Over the last 58 days, between what happened in Venezuela and what started happening in Iran, China has lost two of its most important allies in the developing world.”

Schweizer said Iran and Venezuela — where Trump led the January capture and overthrow of dictator Nicolás Maduro — collectively supply roughly 20% to 25% of China’s energy.

“China was able to buy that energy on the cheap because they were sanctioning companies. They were paying $15 a barrel less than anybody else was,” he added. “And by the way, they weren’t paying in U.S. dollars. They were paying in the Chinese currency, and that has been a long-term objective of China, to move away from a dollar-based economy. That is all gone.”

WATCH:

Schweizer also noted that the U.S. operation against Iran is “having effects” on China “that we don’t even fully appreciate.”

He specifically mentioned the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) race between the U.S. and China, pointing out that “two of the biggest AI contractors” in the East Asian nation ‘both have huge contracts in Venezuela and Iran, for which they are now not going to be paid.'”

“We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars in contracts, of revenue that they were expecting to get that they weren’t getting,” Schweizer said. “So, the ramifications are enormous, and Donald Trump has really shifted the equation with China within a matter of less than two months.”

The U.S. now controls the Strait of Hormuz — a body of water bordering Iran vital to transporting much of the world’s oil supply. Watters asked how that affects China.

“It now means we have a chokehold on the strait. Look, assume that China wanted to move on Taiwan, right? There’s a military response. But now we have a massive energy response, which is we simply don’t allow any tankers to ship oil from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz,” the journalist said. “We can do it. It might have been a little bit dicey had we not taken out the Iranians. That’s roughly half of their oil. Forty to 50 percent of their oil is now suddenly not available to them.”

“So they [China] lose a bunch of customers, and they lose face,” Watters said. “If this mission is successful … what kind of position does that put the United States of America, with Venezuela and now Iran more in our orbit?”

“It means that a lot of countries in the developing world that might have been flirting with China don’t want to flirt with them anymore,” Schweizer said.

“Because they realize that China can sign all the ‘strategic partnerships’ they want, but they’re not going to do anything about it if their allies get in trouble,” he added. “All China has done is send some scolding messages. They haven’t done a single thing to stand up for their allies.”

Schweizer said he thinks the strikes on Iran signal to the developing world that the U.S. under the Trump administration “is the partner that they want to be in business with, not Beijing.”

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Rumble/Fox News)