Peter Alexander has lived in Shanghai for THIRTY years, one of the last Western analysts still on the ground, and the picture he paints should stop Washington cold.
While America drains its reserves and its checkbook, China spent over a decade stockpiling above its needs, building the world's largest refining capacity, and finishing a railway from China into Tehran that went live one year before the bombs started falling.
The last empire that built a railway like that to reach Middle East oil triggered a world war, and Peter walks through that history like a warning label.
Then comes his forecast: China is preparing to do with Iran exactly what it did with Iraq after 2006, and what that means for the world's two oldest civilizations linking arms across Asia.
Plus the story of the morning his inbox flooded with furious emails about China's newest AI model, and what everyone missed 18 months earlier.
His parting line deserves to hang over every desk in Washington:
"Unipolarity abandoned the United States a long time ago."
@WeTheBrandon
