Craig Singleton, a former U.S. diplomat, is a senior fellow and senior director of the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
For the second time in as many months, Beijing has found itself relegated to the superpower sidelines as Washington pummels one of its principal diplomatic partners. Iran now offers a broader lesson for Beijing: American hard power can upend decades of soft-power investment overnight. But if the war turns into an exhausting quagmire, China could gain the upper hand over the United States in the long term.