Aah. So China wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons to "Keep America bogged down in the Middle East"

"... John W. Garver, an expert on Chinese-Iranian relations at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has argued that China is playing a “dual game,” seeking to retain access to “Iran’s fabulously rich but still largely unexploited oil and gas resources to meet China’s skyrocketing demand for imported energy” while also trying to stay on good terms with the U.S. in order “to maintain a favorable macro-climate for China’s development drive.”
Garver believes some officials in China would actually prefer Iran to develop nuclear weapons, because “a strong Iran resistant to U.S. dictates and at odds with the U.S. would force Washington to keep large military forces in the region, limiting the ability of the U.S. to concentrate forces in East Asia, where China’s core interests lie.”
To facilitate a diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue, the U.S. and its allies should show greater flexibility and propose a trade-off that would allow Iran to retain a program of limited uranium enrichment under rigorous international safeguards. If Iran refuses such a compromise, the international consensus against it will only be strengthened.
If sanctions are to succeed, the U.S. must also persuade China to use its growing economic leverage over Iran to encourage it to accept a diplomatic solution. It is in China’s best interest as a rising great power to show that it has the ability to broker such deals, and that domestic economic growth — and bogging down the U.S. military in the Middle East — are not Beijing’s only preoccupations."