Yanis Varoufakis: CHINA Is Biggest Winner Of Iran War

TL;DR

China wins the Iran conflict by brokering peace and gaining diplomatic credibility while the US and Europe undermined their own global standing.

Key Points

• 1.China is the clear geopolitical winner of the Iran war. By brokering diplomacy behind the scenes — including the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal and pressure on Tehran for a ceasefire — China positioned itself as a reliable, non-threatening global partner while the US flip-flopped.
• 2.Iran secured a major financial victory through Strait of Hormuz tolls. JP Morgan calculated Iran will earn $70–90 billion annually in shipping tolls — dwarfing Panama Canal revenues ($5B) and Suez Canal revenues ($10B) — representing 20–25% of Iran's GDP.
• 3.Netanyahu is actively undermining the ceasefire to perpetuate regional war. Varoufakis argues Israel's continued massacres in Lebanon are deliberate — Netanyahu's strategy has always been permanent war to distract from Gaza's genocide and West Bank ethnic cleansing.
• 4.The Iran conflict shattered international law of the sea. The precedent of charging tolls on international waters is unprecedented and could inspire Houthis in the Red Sea and others, effectively fragmenting a cornerstone of global maritime law.
• 5.Europe rendered itself 'unethically irrelevant' by siding with Israel. Unlike China, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt — who shaped the ceasefire — Europe was absent, having lost diplomatic credibility by supporting Israel's Gaza campaign and allowing US use of British bases in Cyprus for strikes on Iran.
• 6.NATO's structural alignment with the US is effectively over. Trump's contradictory demands — dismissing Europeans as military dwarfs while begging them to deploy warships to the Strait of Hormuz — exposed desperation, and Varoufakis believes the US-EU alliance is irreversibly eroding regardless of who leads Washington.