"In a world of global financial markets, geography still rules and it tells a more important story in the Gulf region: While the US contemplates a war with Iran, the Chinese are engaged in trade and infrastructure building a state-of-the-art container port at Gwadar, which they hope will link up with roads, railways and pipelines to western China, from which they can monitor shipping traffic through the Strait. The current tensions are less about Iran & the Persian Gulf than about China & the Indian Ocean. What is occurring in the American-Iranian standoff is about something much vaster. The Chinese are now contemplating the construction of a naval baseadjacent to the Iranian border. It's not only China that is central to the Persian Gulf region. The Indians and Iranians are competing with China and Pakistan to unite the Gulf of Oman with the Eurasian interior."
At www.nytimes.com
