Prior to October 7, observes Grant Rumley, Chinese diplomats were accustomed to “calibrating their language to avoid offending either side too greatly” when speaking of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. They have since shifted more firmly to the anti-Israel side, both because of China’s alliance with Russia and Iran, and also, presumably, to garner sympathy from anti-Semitic constituencies in the Muslim world and in the West:

China has seized on the conflict to criticize not only Israel but by extension the U.S. and its position in the region. . . . Beijing sensed an opportunity to diminish the U.S. standing while boosting its own.

For this reason alone, Israel and America should be wary of China’s efforts to insert itself into the power vacuum in Syria. Rumley continues:

China will undoubtedly try to position itself with whatever governing authority emerges in Syria. Beijing will be able to offer recognition and reconstruction aid, as well as a friendly voice should the emerging new Syrian leadership seek a non-Western voice of support. [But] Russia’s invasion of Ukraine overburdened its economy and military, creating an overreliance on China, Iran, and North Korea. Many Syrians may be loath to embrace Beijing too closely, given its ties to Moscow and Tehran. This . . . presents an opportunity for the U.S. and other Western countries to drive a wedge between the new Syrian government and its traditional backers.

The incoming Trump administration has a rare opportunity. Donald Trump may believe that Syria is “not our fight,” but the competition with China is very much ours and will undoubtedly be a focus of his administration. Here, in Syria, is an opportunity for the U.S. to increase its position at the expense of China.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”