Warning That a Nuclear Escalation Will Leave No Nation on Earth Unscathed
The war that began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggering a cascade of retaliatory missiles, drone swarms, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz now has a nucler dimension that the world’s major powers cannot afford to ignore. Victor Gao, one of China’s most recognised foreign policy scholars and Vice President of the Center for China and Globalization, is not ignoring it. He is demanding that this war be stopped before humanity reaches a threshold from which there is no return.
Victor Gao is not a random commentator. He is Vice President of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank with close ties to Chinese foreign policy circles. He previously served as an interpreter for former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. He speaks directly, frequently, and in English which means his statements are intended for an international audience, and they reflect, at minimum, positions that China’s establishment is comfortable having aired publicly.
When Gao says the US and Israel have launched a war of aggression, he is articulating China’s official position. When he says Iran has every right to retaliate, including against US military bases across the region, he is stating what Beijing believes. And when he warns that a nuclear escalation would have consequences for all of mankind, he is sending a message that Beijing wants heard in Washington.
Aso Read: Ayatollah Khamenei Reported Dead in Joint U.S.-Israeli Strike
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched nearly 900 airstrikes in 12 hours targeting Iran’s missile infrastructure, air defences, nuclear facilities, and leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Iran responded with hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones striking Israel, US military bases across the region, and civilian infrastructure in Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, and Azerbaijan.
Iran then closed the Strait of Hormuz through which roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes and attacked regional energy facilities. The IAEA stated on March 2 that it found no evidence that nuclear facilities had been hit or damaged in the strikes.
By March 7, the conflict has produced more than 1,000 confirmed deaths, hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, and a region-wide energy disruption with global consequences. Hezbollah has re-entered the fight in southern Lebanon. Drone strikes by pro-Iran militias have hit US assets in Iraq over 23 times.
One of Gao’s most striking claims and the one receiving the least scrutiny in Western coverage is his argument that the United States and Israel have already failed, not militarily in the traditional sense, but strategically. His reasoning: by choosing to go to war, they have exposed to Iran, to China, to Russia, and to every other actor watching, precisely how far Iranian missiles can reach and how difficult they are to intercept at scale.
Iran fired an estimated 500 missiles at Israel during their June 2025 Twelve-Day War. In the current conflict, Iran has again demonstrated the capacity to simultaneously strike Israel, multiple Gulf states, a British military base in Cyprus, and US installations across Iraq. That is not the behaviour of a country whose military has been decisively broken. It is the behaviour of a country that has been hurt but is still very much fighting and advertising its reach to everyone watching.
“If the United States really gets bogged down in this war against Iran, no one knows what will happen in the coming years or coming decades.”
Victor Gao, Al Arabiya English interview
Gao’s failure argument is not about whether US and Israeli planes dominate Iranian airspace — they do. It is about whether that dominance has produced the political outcome sought: a collapsed regime, a surrendered nuclear programme, a compliant successor government. On all three counts, as of March 7, it has not. Khamenei’s death has not produced the popular uprising Trump publicly called for.
The IRGC remains active. And Iran’s nuclear material a preliminary US Defence Intelligence Agency assessment, later contested by CIA Director John Ratcliffe may have been moved before the strikes took place. ( DIA assessment disputed)
Gao was direct about dismissing the notion that China benefits from a distracted United States bogged down in a Middle Eastern war. China imports roughly 75% of its oil annually, and a significant portion of that supply travels through the Strait of Hormuz which Iran has now closed. A prolonged war that disrupts those supply chains damages Chinese interests directly. Beijing’s stated preference for peace is not just moral positioning; it is economic self-interest.
Gao also addressed the hypocrisy charge that frequently surfaces in China’s critique of this conflict: Israel, he noted, possesses nuclear weapons and has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. For Israel to justify striking Iran’s nuclear facilities on the grounds that Iran might be pursuing weapons is, in Gao’s words, a double standard of the highest order.
The IAEA’s own assessment, confirmed on March 2 by Director General Rafael Grossi, was that Iran was not days or weeks away from a nuclear weapon, and that there was no evidence of a structured weaponisation programme.
“It is time to stop Israel in this war against Iran and to prevent the United States from really joining this war which may create consequences for mankind as a whole.”
Setting aside Gao’s framing which is explicitly pro-Iran in its sympathies the factual core of his argument is supported by independent verification in several key areas. The IAEA confirmed it found no evidence nuclear facilities were damaged in the initial strikes.
Arms Control Association analysis assesses that Iran’s nuclear programme was set back significantly by the June 2025 strikes, but that at least one enrichment facility at Esfahan remains of unknown status. Iran’s ballistic missile production, US officials have said, was running at 100 missiles per month before this conflict began a rate that provides meaningful reconstitution capacity even after degradation.
Iran’s ability to strike multiple countries simultaneously including British military infrastructure on Cyprus and civilian targets across the Gulf confirms that the opening US-Israeli strikes did not neutralise Iran’s retaliatory capability. That is the empirical basis of Gao’s “failure” claim, regardless of how one assigns moral responsibility for the war’s origins.
Neither the United States, Israel, nor Iran has used nuclear weapons. No credible intelligence assessment publicly available suggests any party is preparing to do so imminently. The US itself assessed before the war began that Iran would need until at least 2035 to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching American soil.
But Gao’s warning is not about the immediate next 48 hours. It is about trajectory. A war that began as a regime-change operation, that has already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Cyprus, the Gulf states, and Azerbaijan, that has closed the world’s most critical oil shipping lane, and that features a combatant Iran with documented enriched uranium stockpiles and surviving nuclear infrastructure, is a war that is closer to nuclear risk than any conflict since the Cold War’s tensest moments. That is not alarmism. That is arithmetic.
Gao is asking the world to do the arithmetic before it is too late. Whether Washington and Tel Aviv are listening is the question that the next phase of this war will answer.
