A Possible Iran-Israel Ceasefire and Why China is Watching the War Closely
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Today on State of the World, a possible Iran-Israel ceasefire and why China is watching the war closely.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Tuesday, June 24th. I'm Greg Dixon. Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire, but will it hold? President Trump announced a pause in the 12-day-old war on social media Monday night. The two sides traded fire up to and passed when the ceasefire was supposed to take effect.

That prompted furious messages from President Trump for both sides to comply with the agreement. The U.S. is, of course, directly involved in this conflict, having bombed nuclear and military sites in Iran over the weekend. As of Tuesday afternoon in Washington, things appear to be quiet.

NPR's Aya Batraoui is in Dubai and has been watching all this unfold. And she spoke to Ari Shapiro about it. Okay, so almost as soon as the ceasefire was announced, Israel seemed to blow right through it. Tell us more about what happened. Yeah, it was a very shaky, uncertain start. Israel pounded Iran with strikes during a window between when Trump announced the ceasefire and when it was supposed to come into effect this morning. And then Iran hit southern Israel, killing four people there. And then

After the ceasefire began, Israel said Iran had fired some missiles. It didn't cause damage and Iran denies firing anything, but Israel was ramping up to hit even harder when President Trump issued a very rare public rebuke of Israel. He told reporters, I am not happy with Israel. And then he said, these two countries don't know what the blank they're doing. And then he posted online a message to Israel in all caps saying, do not drop those bombs. If you do, it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home immediately.

And that's when we saw Israeli warplanes bomb an Iranian radar installation and nothing more. So strong words in public. What about behind the scenes? Can you tell us about the conversations that have been going on among these three countries since the war started? Like immediately after Israel first launched its attacks on Iran,

that started this war. Countries in the region rushed to condemn the attack. And behind the scenes, there were all these calls from Arab leaders to the U.S., to one another, to Iran's president. There were messages being passed here and a whole full network of back channel efforts to really try to de-escalate things. And we even saw how that played out just before the ceasefire was announced.

So last week, the U.S. started moving aircraft into hardened shelters at its largest base in the Middle East, al-Audeid, in Qatar last week. And then the U.S. bombed Iran's nuclear sites soon after that. And then what we saw when Iran came to respond to that U.S. attack with missiles fired at that same airbase,

that Qatar had closed its airspace only hours before. And that also involved back-channeling, with Iran giving prior notice and warning about that attack to mitigate fallout. Interesting. Just taking the long view over the last couple of years, the region has changed so dramatically, with Syria's leader falling, Hezbollah decimated in Lebanon, Hamas being pummeled in Gaza, and now the conflict with Iran is...

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is reshaping the Middle East for the good of the region. What is the view in Arab states?

You know, Ari, it has changed a lot, but war for particularly Gulf Arab states, especially where I am in the UAE and Dubai, it's never a good thing for any country, but especially here because you've got 10 million people, 9 million or more are foreigners. This place really relies on tourism and investment, foreign workers and international travel.

Now that said, there was some support for Israel's attacks. I asked Emirati political science professor Abd al-Khalaq Abdallah about that, and here's what he said. - We had Iran with all these missiles, capabilities, drone capabilities. So any weakening of Iran, no matter who does it, whether it's God or a devil or Netanyahu or Trump or whatever, at the end of the day, it's good for the stability of the entire Middle East and the Gulf included. - Now that's the view of some in the Gulf,

But also, Abdullah says, and he represents other views also here, that Israel too is wreaking havoc. And he says that goes from the West Bank to Lebanon, Assyria and Gaza. Israel now so arrogant, wants to be the hegemon, and it wants now to somehow engineer a new Middle East in its own image of a sword. None of that is comforting. None of that is good for the region. And you

You know, Ari, until now, Israel hasn't ended its war in Gaza. You know, the death toll there at more than 56,000 people, more than 17,000 of them children, according to its health ministry, is still climbing by the day. That war is a tinderbox in the region. And also, it's too early to tell if this war destroyed or just severely damaged Iran's nuclear program, which was Israel's argument for the attack in the first place. Iran was in talks with the U.S. before all of this, and there was already very little trust between the two sides.

That's NPR's Aya Batraoui in Dubai. Thank you. Thank you. The conflict in the Middle East has the potential to have worldwide impacts on global markets. One country that has been closely following developments is China. That's because China is the largest importer of Iranian oil and also a close political partner of Iran's.

NPR's Emily Fang tells us more. In the days after Israel's first strikes on Iran earlier this month, these panicked videos from Chinese citizens stuck in Tehran, Iran's capital, proliferated on Chinese social media. This Chinese traveler blogging under the name Chai You're Living in Pingyang says, with the help of a lot of Iranian people, we have managed to escape.

China says it's evacuated more than 3,000 of its citizens from Iran, many of them working for Chinese oil and energy companies.

China and Iran are close partners. Iran's one of the few countries which allows Chinese terrorists visa-free entry. And including at a press conference this week, China's foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Zhaquan has repeatedly singled out Israel, quote, in particular for what China calls a dangerous precedent of bombing Iran's nuclear facilities.

Plus, China buys a lot of Iranian crude oil, despite American sanctions. China has always been the biggest buyer. Muyu Xu is a senior analyst at commodities research firm Kepler, and she uses satellite data to track oil tankers. From the moment the vessels approach the oil terminals, loaded, track all the way until it reached to the ports in China.

All to figure out just how much Iranian oil China buys under the table, which over the last year is more than 90% of Iran's oil exports.

The oil is transported to China by what Elizabeth Bra, a fellow at the nonpartisan think tank the Atlantic Council, calls a dark fleet of ships. It's simply vessels that sail outside the official shipping system. They are often aging vessels that have owners that are very hard to identify. Then, after labeling the oil as coming from Malaysia or Oman, she says the crude is then brought to small private refineries in China.

They get the Iranian oil at a discount. Because not that many countries were willing to buy. But the biggest reason behind this trade is to financially prop up Iran's current regime. The reason that it buys it from Iran is to make sure that the Islamic Republic can survive.

Saeed Arsameenijan is a senior advisor on Iran at the neoconservative U.S. think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Before 1979, Iran was a key partner of the United States in the region. Right now it's important for China that Iran does not go back to that.

China does not have a global military, meaning it does not have the capacity to send military might to Iran. But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged Beijing's political leverage over Tehran in this Fox News interview. Well, I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a lot of Gulf oil is transported.

But China has some options. It actually buys more oil from Russia right now. It could also turn to oil-rich Venezuela or West Africa.

All that would cost China billions of dollars more a year. Here's Muyu Xu again from Kepler. It's going to be a tricky situation for everybody. Tricky but not impossible. Plus, for the last half year, China has been stockpiling oil. That's the record high based on our data. Xu says China has more than 1 billion barrels in stock, more than 70 days worth, buying them some time to wait out whatever happens over the next few weeks in the Middle East.

Emily Fang, NPR News, Washington. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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