Breaking complex challenges into manageable, discrete problems is the rational logic of effective statecraft; fusing otherwise unrelated issues into a single, unwieldy whole only ensures that none of them can be resolved properly.

But that is exactly what the United States administration is trying to do. It is not simply escalating the Middle East crisis, but bundling together theaters that would normally be kept apart. The threat of a 50 percent tariff raise on China over alleged “military support” for Iran, coupled with attempts to redirect Chinese oil purchases through politically conditioned channels toward Venezuela, reflects a calculus that treats security, trade and energy issues related to different parties as interchangeable instruments of pressure.

This is not merely coercive diplomacy. It is a form of strategic compression, in which multiple disputes are collapsed into a single negotiating framework. Middle East stability, global energy markets and Sino-US trade relations are no longer discrete issues but components of one overarching bargain. For the world, that is precisely what makes the situation so dangerous.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has repeatedly stressed that the immediate priority is to preserve the “fragile ceasefire” in the Gulf. The region, as he said in a telephone conversation with Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar on Monday, is at a critical point, where even limited escalation could undo the tenuous progress achieved through mediation efforts. China, as he emphasized, will continue working with the international community to sustain the dialogue process.

On the US allegation that China is providing military support to Iran, Beijing’s rebuttal has been unequivocal. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the United States dismissed the claim as “untrue”, urging an end to “groundless accusations”.

The broader concern, however, lies in the logic of deliberate linkage itself. By tying Iran policy to tariffs on China, and extending that linkage to Venezuela’s sovereign energy trade, the US approach risks turning every issue into a bargaining chip. As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun noted, Venezuela has the right to determine its own economic partnerships, and external interference only complicates already fragile supply dynamics.

The Iran crisis should not be instrumentalized. The belligerents should preserve the ceasefire, however fragile; using it to open a window for peace rather than using the lull to expand claimed “gains”. The US administration should resist the temptation to entangle the Iran conflict it started with Israel with unrelated issues, which only makes resolution more elusive.

What the US is doing resembles a kind of “triumphalogy” — a belief that multiple fronts can be activated at once, that regional actors can be pressed to shoulder the costs of war, that alliances can be drawn deeper into conflict, and yet that the outcome will somehow remain advantageous regardless of how events unfold.

Earlier calls for Middle Eastern countries to bear more of the conflict burden, alongside suggestions that NATO allies should become more directly involved, point in the same direction of Washington’s attempts to draw others in to bear its responsibility without providing corresponding ways to narrow risk.

The attempt to bring China into this equation is therefore not an isolated move but part of a wider pattern of accumulated linkages — tariffs, energy flows, security commitments — that only adds complexity to an already complicated volatile situation. Rather than containing the crisis, it risks diffusing it across multiple domains.

The underlying problem therefore is the US administration’s insistence on over-entanglement. By merging security crises with economic coercion, flexibility is reduced and solutions become harder to reach. Each dispute reinforces the others, creating a system in which compromise in one area is constrained by demands in another.

The more tightly these strands are bound together, the greater the risk that, despite assurances to the contrary, no one emerges as the winner.