>>507444916China will always act in the best interest of China, of course, but I do think they want to strengthen their global influence. They're already doing soft colonialism in Africa. The benefits of openly backing Iran would be that they would essentially own Iran, which has 10 percent of the world's oil and 15 percent of its natural gas, and that they would now have an obedient proxy in the middle east. The downside, of course, is that they would be essentially entering into a cold war with the US, their biggest trade partner and ostensibly the most powerful country on Earth. I think they'll do it if they believe the US is weak enough.