New Delhi, March 6 -- This century's big story was supposed to be the rise of China amid a scramble by the US to secure a second 'American century,' as the 20th was branded. Of late, though, Beijing's ambition seems to have lost some of the ballast imparted by President Xi Jinping's 2013 ascent to China's top.

For all its ties with Iran and outreach to West Asia, heralded by a patch-up it brokered across the Gulf in 2023, China's role in the war that rages today is either negligible or invisible. A pre-emptive air campaign by the US and Israel to disarm Iran has not just trumped America's 'Shock and Awe' of 2003 against Iraq in ferocity, it threatens to leave Chinese diplomacy under the region's rubble as Tehran hits out at US-allied Gul...