In the past, the notion of “peace through strength” was read as a military proposition: Assemble enough force, and adversaries will stand down. Operation Epic Fury has shown the error of that presumption. We’ve seen in Iran how deterrence multiplies when military power, economic pressure and alliance consolidation strike together. America’s response to the China challenge has suffered the same narrowness — until now. Washington spent years treating competition with Beijing as a discrete series of problems — of the Indo-Pacific, or artificial intelligence, or trade balances — as though China were competing selectively, in specific theaters. China, however, has been competing across every domain and every region simultaneously, building energy dependencies, embedding financial architecture and acquiring port access from the Atlantic to the South China Sea. The Middle East was always a theater in that competition, and Iran was always a central CCP asset. Beijing’s investment in Iran went well beyond oil.…