Threatening their ties to Iran would be a very effective means of keeping China in check at this time.
I don’t think anything China could do during this pandemic would equal that loss.
Or maybe it’s just Israel.
Fun refutation from ZH:
“the U.S. had no real leverage over Iran short of bombing the country back to the stone age. That would never happen on Trump’s watch because Iran’s leadership would never do anything so overt as to invite that response.”