MADRID - As the Portuguese international relations scholar Bruno Maçaes has argued in a recent article, for years the most derided “conspiracy theorists” reduced every international conflict to a single variable: oil. “Follow the pipeline,” they would insist.

Today, as tensions with the Islamic Republic of Iran intensify, much analysis has shifted toward explanations centered on ideology, sectarian rivalry or nuclear proliferation, as if geography and resources had ceased to matter. Yet the course of events suggests that those often-dismissed readings captured a structural dimension that remains central and deserves to be reconsidered with greater seriousness.

The current posture of the United States toward Tehran, defined by sustained economic pressure and repeated efforts to constrain Iran’s strategic room for maneuver, can only be understood by connecting several structural factors. The first is Iran’s geostrategic location, at the intersection of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean, with direct influence over the Persian Gulf and key global energy routes. The second is its vast hydrocarbon reserves, among the largest in the world, which give the country enduring weight in any long-term energy equation. The third is its strategic partnership with China, which embeds Iran in an alternative Eurasian architecture and reduces its vulnerability to Western isolation.

To these elements must be added a fourth factor that is increasingly relevant and still often underestimated: global competition, particularly between China and the United States, over artificial intelligence and the material resources required to sustain it. Large-scale AI infrastructure depends on a stable and abundant supply of energy, as well as access to critical raw materials. In this context, countries with significant energy reserves and the ability to integrate into non-Western supply chains acquire added strategic value. Iran, with its energy potential and its alignment with economies seeking technological autonomy, fits squarely into this emerging logic.

It is at the convergence of these four points that the real core of the confrontation comes into view. Beyond the normative language of human rights or non-proliferation, the relationship between Washington and Tehran reflects a classical balance-of-power logic, adapted to a world in which energy, technology and structural alliances have once again moved to the center of international politics. Understanding this dynamic requires restoring geography, resources and technological transformation to the heart of the analysis, where rhetoric often obscures the more persistent motivations.

Iran is not simply another “rogue” actor in the Middle East. It is a central geographic node in the Eurasian space. Its borders open onto the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea and, through Afghanistan and Central Asia, extend toward the heart of the continent. This position makes it the only potential land corridor capable of linking East Asia with the Mediterranean without crossing Russian territory or areas under direct American control. China’s Belt and Road Initiative internalized this reality long ago, channeling billions of dollars into Iranian infrastructure designed to integrate the country into networks of trade, transport and energy. To neutralize Iran or restrict its room for maneuver therefore means acquiring the ability to condition the most ambitious continental integration project of the twenty-first century, one intended to reshape global economic flows and reduce the structural weight of the West.

The second axis is energy. According to the 2025 statistics, Iran holds the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest reserves of natural gas. In a context in which the energy transition is advancing unevenly and without coordination, and in which demand for hydrocarbons remains high, these resources constitute a first-order source of strategic power. For decades, the sanctions regime has kept much of this potential underutilized by limiting access to finance, technology and markets. That containment was not a side effect but an energy policy in its own right: preventing an autonomous actor from expanding global supply and altering balances that favored other producers and their geopolitical sponsors.

The third factor introduces a new but decisive variable. The global energy system is entering a phase of structural strain driven by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. The data centers required to train and operate advanced models consume volumes of electricity comparable to those of medium-sized states, and projections for the end of the decade have set off alarm bells in Washington. The United States, according to numerous indicators, faces an emerging energy bottleneck. Its energy mix still relies heavily on natural gas, and while its deployment of renewables is significant, it lags behind China’s pace. Beijing has turned regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet into hubs of massive power generation.

Competition for supremacy in artificial intelligence is not decided solely at the technological frontier of semiconductors or in the ability to design more efficient algorithms. It is also, and increasingly, decided by access to abundant, cheap and reliable energy to power digital infrastructure. On this front, China enjoys a structural advantage rooted in an energy expansion conducted on a continental scale. In that context, Iranian resources, both fossil and potentially renewable, acquire renewed relevance, not as remnants of a declining energy order but as critical inputs for the next phase of global strategic competition.

It is here that the various vectors converge and explain why Iran occupies such a central place in global strategy. Geography, energy, artificial intelligence and the alliance with China form a coherent whole that turns the country into a priority objective. The strategic understanding between Tehran and Beijing is deep and sustained. China not only purchases Iranian oil, often in defiance of sanctions, but also participates actively in the modernization of Iran’s energy infrastructure and, most importantly, in the development of its petrochemical sector. The 25-year strategic agreement signed in 2021 envisages up to $400bn in Chinese investment in energy, transport and infrastructure in exchange for a stable, discounted supply of hydrocarbons. For Beijing, Iran is simultaneously a guarantor of energy security and an indispensable land pivot. For Washington, this relationship represents a first-order adverse scenario: the combination of Iranian energy resources with Chinese capital, technology and geopolitical ambition.

From this perspective, the US policy of “maximum pressure” goes far beyond the nuclear file. Its structural objective is to prevent Iran from consolidating itself as a key energy supplier and a reliable logistical corridor for America’s main systemic competitor. If Washington cannot freely access Venezuelan or Russian reserves to ease its own internal energy pressures, a need that is becoming increasingly acute, it can at least try to make it harder for China to secure access to Iran’s vast potential. The logic is that of a preventive energy blockade. By suffocating the Iranian economy, the development of major gas fields such as South Pars is delayed and the Chinese project of a stable route from the Persian Gulf to its industrial core becomes more costly and complex.

This reading also helps to explain Iran’s perception of internal instability. Socioeconomic protests that periodically shake the country are real and reflect deep tensions in everyday life. Yet from the perspective of the state, it is impossible to separate them from the context of sustained economic warfare from abroad. With a historical memory shaped by episodes of foreign intervention, from the 1953 coup to the war with Iraq, the authorities interpret that groups they label as terrorist, and which they accuse of receiving external logistical and media support, seek to instrumentalize legitimate discontent for purposes of strategic destabilization. This is presented not as conspiratorial intuition but as the application of familiar pressure manuals: intensifying internal unrest to force concessions or provoke collapse. From this logic, Iranian resilience is measured not only in terms of internal control but in its capacity to preserve the pillars of its power, its regional projection and its alliance with China, under conditions of prolonged siege.

Today, the attempt to strangle the Iranian economy and, indirectly, to limit a key energy source for China operates as a gradual embargo. It is not proclaimed openly but implemented through financial sanctions, secondary threats against crude buyers and constant diplomatic pressure. The risk of miscalculation is high. Iran is not an actor that can be easily bent, and China shows little inclination to abandon a strategic partner under pressure. The result is a dynamic of action and reaction in which an incident in the Strait of Hormuz, an attack on energy infrastructure or an indirect escalation could trigger a wider confrontation.

The analysts who for decades reduced conflicts to oil alone were undoubtedly simplistic. But those who today ignore the centrality of energy, geography and great-power competition in the Iranian case are guilty of an even greater naïveté. The United States is not seeking merely to contain Iran’s nuclear program. It aims to prevent the Eurasian landmass and its vast energy resources from becoming durably integrated into the orbit of its principal strategic rival. Iran, for its part, is playing the most valuable card it has: its position and its resources, offering cooperation to whoever can guarantee its survival and strategic autonomy. On this board, protests, human rights rhetoric and the nuclear debate often function as narrative tools and instruments of pressure. The underlying contest is fought on the map, over control of the corridors and energy sources that will power the global economy and artificial intelligence in the twenty-first century. In that structural conflict, Iran has become, willingly or not, one of the central arenas.