China's Iran Dilemma

You have to hand it the folks at China's Foreign Ministry. As well as anyone on the planet, they have learned over the years how to craft sentences that reach the summit of diplomatic obfuscation. So it was on Feb. 6, when the Foreign Minister representing this century's ascendant power addressed a gathering that's a blast from the past: the Munich Security Conference, a 46-year-old annual gabfest that used to be populated by Western Europeans and Americans obsessed with plugging the Fulda Gap. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was there this year, and he knew there was no chance he...