Let me ask you something. If you had a ship, a massive oil tanker sized vessel packed wall to wall with weapons, ammunition, and defensive gear sitting 38 miles off the coast of one of America’s closest Gulf allies, would you maybe, just maybe, post a security team on it? Like more than one guy scrolling his phone on the deck? Because apparently, whoever was responsible for the MV Our Chan, a Honduras flagged Chinese operated floating armory, did not get that memo.
And on May 14th, 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy didn’t just sail past it, they boarded it, they seized it, and they dragged it straight toward Iranian territorial waters in broad daylight while the President of the United States and the President of China were literally sitting across a table from each other in Beijing agreeing that the Strait of Hormuz must stay open.
Let that sink in for a second. Not hypothetically, not in a simulation, in real life. On the same day, simultaneously. So, today we are going to break this down completely. What happened, why it matters, what Iran is actually saying right now, and critically, what the US military has already done and is positioned to do next.
Because the mainstream coverage is barely scratching the surface on this one, and you deserve the full picture. Stay with me, because this one changes the calculus of this entire conflict. So, let’s start from the top and build the full picture because context here is everything. The MV Our Chan, also being referenced in some reports as the Hui Chan, is a Honduras flagged vessel that was operating as what the maritime security industry calls a floating armory.
Now, if you’ve never heard that term before, let me explain it because it matters enormously here. A floating armory is essentially a weapons storage and transfer platform anchored in international waters, typically outside the 12 nautical mile territorial limit of any nation. They exist specifically to serve commercial shipping companies transiting high-risk maritime zones.
The way it works is a commercial vessel, say a tanker or a cargo ship moving through the Gulf of Aden or the Persian Gulf doesn’t want to carry its own weapons into port because most countries have strict laws about armed vessels docking at their terminals. So, instead, the shipping company contracts a maritime security firm.
The security team boards the vessel at the edge of the danger zone. They pick up weapons from the floating armory, transit the high-risk corridor, and then return the weapons to the floating armory on the other side. Clean, legal, practical. That’s the system. That’s been the system for years, particularly after Somali piracy exploded between 2008 and 2012.
And it worked until May 14th, 2026, when the very system designed to stop pirates got hijacked by the most well-armed pirates in the region. Now, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations, UKMTO, which monitors and reports on maritime security incidents in the Gulf region, the vessel was confirmed to be anchored approximately 38 nautical miles northeast of Fujairah.
For geographic context, Fujairah is the UAE’s primary oil export terminal on the eastern coast, the one that deliberately bypasses the Strait of Hormuz altogether. It’s a strategic lifeline. It’s also about as close to being in America’s backyard in the Gulf as you can get. UAE is one of Washington’s most critical partners in the region.
So, this wasn’t Iran probing some neutral maritime zone. This was Iran walking up to the front yard of a US ally and taking something brazenly, deliberately. And the timing, and I really cannot stress this enough, was not accidental. Because on May 14th, 2026, President Trump was in Beijing for what’s been called the Trump-Xi summit.
And the readout from that summit included two very specific public agreements. First, both sides agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open for the free flow of global energy. Second, both sides publicly affirmed that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. President Trump told reporters, specifically Fox News, that President Xi personally gave him assurances that China would not provide military equipment to Iran.
Trump called it, “a big statement.”
And then, within hours, possibly while the ink was literally still wet on those summit notes, the IRGC Navy boarded a Chinese-operated vessel and seized an entire floating weapons cache. You tell me that’s a coincidence. I’ll wait. Here’s where it gets even more layered.
The Our Chan wasn’t just any random commercial ship flying a flag of convenience. It was operated by a Chinese maritime security firm. It was Chinese-operated. The weapons on board were intended for use by commercial vessels transiting the exact corridors that China’s own Belt and Road shipping interests depend on.
So, if you take this at pure face value, China just had one of its own security assets stolen by the IRGC. If you believe the summit readout and Xi’s personal assurances to Trump, China should be furious. They should be filing diplomatic protests. They should be demanding the vessel back. But, and pay close attention here, as of the morning of May 15th, 2026, Beijing’s public response has been remarkably quiet, remarkably measured, and remarkably free of the kind of sharp language you’d expect from a nation whose ship just got pirated in international waters by a sanctioned paramilitary force. And that silence, that tells you something. It tells you quite a lot, actually. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the summit outcome directly and didn’t mince words. He confirmed the US position clearly. Washington will never support an Iranian tolling system in the strait.
The US does not recognize Iran’s claimed right to place mines in international waters. But, the line that really stood out, the one that I think defined the entire American posture in that press briefing, was this. “We’re not asking for China’s help. We don’t need their help.”
Read that again slowly. That is the United States diplomatically acknowledging a moment of public alignment with Beijing while simultaneously telling Beijing in plain English, “Don’t mistake our courtesy for dependence.”
It’s a fascinating dual message. Keep your friends close and your friend of me is closer with a press release. Now, here’s the broader picture I want you to hold in your mind as we go through the rest of this breakdown. Iran right now is under enormous economic pressure. By multiple credible estimates, including reporting from Reuters and analysis from the Institute for the Study of War, Iran has been hemorrhaging roughly $500 million per day in economic damage since the escalation in the Strait began.
Their currency has been in freefall. Their proxy networks, Hezbollah, the Houthis, various Iraqi militia factions, have been systematically degraded over the past 18 months. Their air defense architecture took catastrophic hits. And their conventional military hardware, particularly precision munitions, has been burning through stockpiles faster than domestic production can replenish.
So, what do you do when you’re running low on weapons, your economy is being strangled, and your main leverage point is a waterway that the entire world wants reopened? You get creative. And what happened on May 14th, 2026, was creative. Disturbingly creative. Because if Iran needed to restock, if the IRGC Navy needed small arms, RPGs, shoulder-fired weapons, possibly mines, possibly something more advanced, a floating armory sitting 38 miles off Fujairah, operated by a company with Chinese ties at a moment when the global media was completely fixated on a summit in Beijing, well, that’s not a bad shopping trip, is it? The question isn’t whether Iran wanted those weapons. Of course, they did. The question, and the one that’s going to define the next chapter of this conflict, is whether they had help finding the store. We are going to answer that.
We’re going to look at what Iran is saying publicly right now because the rhetoric coming out of Tehran in the last 24 hours is some of the most aggressive language of this entire conflict. And then we’re going to get into what the US military has already done to Iran’s so-called mosquito fleet. And what assets are in the theater right now that could turn that mini navy into a very bad memory very quickly. Don’t go anywhere.
Let’s talk about what Iran is actually saying right now because if you’ve been following the mainstream coverage, you’re getting the diplomatic version. Sanitized both sides framing that makes it sound like we’re still in a slow moving negotiation with a rational actor at the table. We are not.
The rhetoric coming out of Tehran since May 14th, 2026 has escalated to a level that frankly, I haven’t seen matched at any point in this entire conflict. And when you line up what they’re saying publicly against what they just did with that floating armory, you start to see a regime that isn’t positioning for a deal.
It’s positioning for a long war. And understanding that distinction is the difference between reading this situation correctly and completely misreading it. Let’s start with the statement that got the most attention. Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is simultaneously serving as the chief negotiator in the nuclear talks, which is already a strange combination, posted publicly on social media that Iran’s armed forces are, “prepared to deliver a lesson-giving response to any aggression.”
Now, on its face, that sounds like standard Iranian deterrence language. They say things like that fairly regularly, but context matters here. Ghalibaf isn’t just a politician making tough guy social media posts. He’s a former IRGC Air Force commander. He’s been deeply embedded in the Revolutionary Guards command structure for decades.
When he uses that language in the same 24-hour window that the IRGC Navy is boarding a weapon ship 38 miles off the UAE coast, that’s not a coincidence of timing. That’s coordinated messaging. That’s the regime speaking with one voice across the military and political channels simultaneously. But the statement that I think deserves far more attention than it’s getting, the one that I’ve been going back to repeatedly since it dropped, is the IRGC’s own framing of the Strait of Hormuz.
Senior IRGC officials have now publicly and explicitly called the Strait of Hormuz Iran’s, “nuclear weapon.”
Let that phrase sit with you for a moment. They’re not saying it accidentally. They’re not speaking loosely. They are deliberately and consciously drawing an equivalence between a geographic choke point and a weapon of mass strategic destruction.
What they’re communicating, in language designed to be heard by Washington, by Beijing, by Riyadh, by every energy dependent economy on the planet, is this: We don’t need a nuclear warhead to hold the world hostage. We already have one. It’s 21 mi wide. It carries 20% of the world’s traded oil. And we’re standing right next to it with a match.
Now, is that posture militarily realistic? That’s a separate question. And we’re going to get into the US military’s answer to it very shortly. But strategically, as a communications move, it’s not stupid. Because the Strait of Hormuz really is that important. According to the US Energy Information Administration, approximately 20 to 21 million barrels of oil pass through the strait every single day.
That’s roughly 1/5 of global petroleum liquids consumption. The moment that flow gets seriously disrupted, not just threatened, actually disrupted, you’re looking at oil price spikes that would send shockwaves through every major economy on Earth. Iran knows this. They’ve known it for decades. It’s been the central pillar of their deterrent strategy since at least the 1980s Tanker War.
What’s different now is that they’re saying it out loud with maximum aggression at a moment when they’ve just demonstrated their willing to act inside what should be a secure maritime corridor. And then there’s the nuclear dimension, which you cannot separate from this. Let me give you the numbers because the numbers are genuinely alarming.
As of the most recent IAEA reporting and analysis from Arms Control Researchers, Iran is estimated to have stockpiled approximately 408 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity. Weapons grade is 90%. 60% is not weapons grade. But here’s the thing that the casual headline doesn’t tell you. The technical jump from 60% to 90% enrichment is significantly shorter and faster than the jump from lower enrichment levels to 60%.
The hard work in terms of centrifuge time and technical complexity is largely already done. Multiple non-proliferation experts quoted in Arms Control Today and Reuters analysis pieces have estimated that Iran’s current stockpile, if the decision were made to push to 90%, could theoretically produce enough fissile material for one nuclear device in a matter of weeks, not months, weeks.
That’s what’s sitting on the negotiating table right now. That’s the actual stakes of these talks. Iran’s current negotiating position, as relayed through Pakistan, and yes, we are going to talk about Pakistan’s role here because it keeps getting more uncomfortable, has been described by the Trump administration as totally unacceptable.
President Trump used that exact phrase publicly. He also used the word stupid, which diplomatic niceties aside, tells you exactly how much patience Washington has left for the current Iranian counteroffer. From what’s been reported across multiple outlets, including Al Jazeera and Gulf News, Iran’s position includes demanding a five-year moratorium framework that would essentially allow them to pause enrichment activity on paper while preserving the entire nuclear infrastructure intact.
No dismantlement, no destruction of centrifuges, no verifiable reduction in stockpiles, just a pause, a diplomatic timeout. And then, in five years, or whenever the political winds shift, they pick up exactly where they left off, except with five more years of covert development baked in. The Trump administration looked at that offer and called it what it is, a stall, a very expensive, very dangerous stall.
Now, Pakistan. Let’s go there because this keeps coming up and it keeps getting buried in the coverage. Pakistan has been serving as the primary intermediary channel for these ceasefire negotiations. On April 8th, 2026, a ceasefire framework was brokered partly through Pakistani diplomatic channels. That ceasefire, and I use that word loosely because both sides have continued maritime incidents since it was announced has been described by US officials as being on “massive life support.”
But here’s the part that should be making more headlines. Multiple credible reports, including analysis pieces and regional security publications, indicate that Pakistani airfields have been used to host Iranian surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. Iranian spy planes operating out of Pakistani territory while Pakistan is simultaneously mediating peace talks between Iran and the United States.
Think about what that means structurally. You have a mediator who is at minimum allowing one party to the conflict to use its soil for intelligence operations against the other party. That is not neutral mediation. That is something else entirely. And the Trump administration’s patience with that arrangement appears to be running out alongside its patience with Tehran’s nuclear stalling.
Here’s the thread that ties all of this together and I want to make sure this lands clearly. Iran is not negotiating to reach a deal right now. Iran is negotiating to survive long enough to reach a position where a deal is no longer necessary. Every stalled counter offer, every seized vessel, every aggressive public statement about the straight being their nuclear weapon.
These are not random escalations. They are moves in a deliberate strategy designed to do one thing, outlast American attention, outlast coalition unity, and keep the Strait of Hormuz as a permanent leverage instrument indefinitely. They want the US to get tired. They want the coalition partners to fracture.
They want the oil markets to scream loud enough that someone, somewhere, offers them a way out that lets them keep everything. That’s the play. That’s what they’re running. And the floating armory seizure fits perfectly into that strategy because every weapon they add to their IRGC Navy inventory, every RPG, every heavy machine gun, every potentially advanced seeker they may have gotten off that Chinese operated vessel extends their capacity to harass, threaten, and periodically close the strait.
It extends the pressure campaign. It extends the leverage. And it does it in a way that gives Beijing plausible deniability and keeps Washington reacting instead of dictating the tempo. But, here’s the thing about reacting. Sometimes the response is so overwhelming, so precisely calibrated, and so publicly demonstrated that it flips the entire strategic equation.
And the US military? They’ve been preparing that response. They’ve already started delivering it. And what’s currently positioned in that theater right now should make every IRGC fast attack boat captain very, very uncomfortable. That’s exactly where we’re going next. All right. Let’s talk about what the US military has actually done.
What they’ve publicly stated under oath they’re prepared to do. And what is physically sitting in that theater right now waiting for the order. Because this is the part that the mainstream coverage consistently underplays. You’ll get the diplomatic headlines. You’ll get the Iranian rhetoric headlines. What you won’t always get is the cold, hardware level reality of what the United States has quietly been assembling in and around the Persian Gulf over the past several months.
And when you lay it all out, the platforms, the weapon systems, the command testimony, the recent operational history, the picture that emerges is not one of a superpower scrambling to respond. It’s one of a superpower that has been methodically, professionally, and very deliberately setting the table for a very specific kind of fight.
Let’s start with the congressional testimony because this is on the record and it deserves far more attention than it received. Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command, CENTCOM, appeared before Congress and testified under oath about the US military’s posture and capabilities in the Gulf region.
What he described was not a reactive force. It was a pre-positioned, multi-domain strike architecture specifically designed to counter exactly the kind of low-tech, high-volume threat that Iran’s IRGC Navy represents. Admiral Cooper confirmed that US forces have already conducted offensive operations against IRGC naval assets.
He confirmed that the US military has the capability and the positioning to significantly degrade Iran’s fast attack craft fleet, what’s been called the mosquito fleet, rapidly and at scale. And he made clear that the rules of engagement, combined with the current threat environment, give US commanders significant operational flexibility to respond to provocations like the Hourchoun seizure.
That testimony wasn’t delivered in a vacuum. It was delivered as a signal. A very deliberate, very public signal to Tehran that Washington’s patience has both a limit and a consequence. Now, let’s talk about the mosquito fleet itself, because you need to understand what the US is actually up against before you can appreciate how prepared the response is.
Iran’s IRGC Navy fast attack craft force, the one that executed the Hourchoun boarding, is built around speed, swarm tactics, and asymmetric harassment. These aren’t conventional warships. They’re fast, small, and maneuverable, typically ranging from about 10 to 15 m in length, capable of speeds exceeding 50 knots in some configurations.
They’re equipped with 12.7 mm heavy machine guns as standard armament. The larger variants carry anti-ship cruise missiles, the Noor missile, which is an Iranian reverse-engineered derivative of the Chinese C-802, with a range of roughly 120 km and a 165 kg warhead. Some configurations carry rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Some have been documented carrying man-portable air defense systems, MANPADS, the Stinger, which are shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles capable of engaging low-flying aircraft. And the IRGC has been quite public about the scale of this force. Estimates from defense analysts, including those cited in USNI News and The Aviationist, put the total number of IRGC fast attack craft somewhere between several hundred and potentially over a thousand vessels when you include all variants and reserve assets.
That’s not a fleet. That’s a swarm. And swarms require a very specific kind of answer. Enter the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Now, if you follow defense coverage at all over the past decade, you’ll know that the A-10 Warthog has been the subject of a seemingly endless retirement debate inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The Air Force has repeatedly tried to phase it out in favor of more modern multi-role platforms.
Congress has repeatedly blocked those attempts. And right now, in the context of the Persian Gulf, the reason Congress was right to block those retirements is becoming extremely clear. Because the A-10 was built for exactly this kind of fight. Not the high-end pure competitor contested airspace fight that the F-35 and F-22 were designed for.
The low-altitude, high-density close support fight against a large number of small, fast-moving targets operating in cluttered maritime environments. That’s the A-10’s wheelhouse. That has always been the A-10’s wheelhouse. And right now, according to reporting from Air and Space Forces Magazine and Stars and Stripes, there are dozens of A-10s either already deployed to the region or within rapid deployment range of the Persian Gulf theater.
Let’s get specific about what makes the A-10 so particularly lethal against fast attack craft. Because the numbers here are genuinely impressive. The GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon, the centerpiece of the A-10’s armament, fires 30-mm rounds at a rate of approximately 3,900 rounds per minute in high rate mode. These aren’t conventional bullets.
In high explosive incendiary configuration, each round carries an explosive tip that detonates on or just after impact, creating a combination of kinetic penetration and explosive fragmentation effect. Against a lightly armored fiberglass hulled fast attack craft doing 50 knots across open water, a 2-second burst from a GAU-8 is not a warning shot. It’s a mission kill.
It’s a boat kill. And the A-10 can carry that cannon plus a full complement of AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missiles, MK-82 general purpose bombs, and rocket pods, giving it the ability to engage multiple targets across a wide maritime area in a single sortie. The crews that fly these aircraft train extensively for exactly this kind of maritime strike scenario.
They’ve been doing it for years. And the platform that was once nicknamed the tank buster has, in the context of this conflict, earned a new nickname that is entirely appropriate. The boat buster. But the A-10 is not operating alone in this theater and that’s what makes the US posture here so layered and so difficult for Iran to counter.
Let’s talk about the AC-130J Ghostrider because this platform doesn’t get nearly enough coverage relative to its actual battlefield significance. The AC-130J is the latest variant of the legendary gunship lineage that stretches back to Vietnam era operations. It is, at its core, a heavily modified C-130 transport aircraft converted into a precision fire support platform that would be completely absurd if it weren’t completely real.
The AC-130J carries a 30-mm Bushmaster cannon, a 105-mm M102 howitzer. Yes, a howitzer on an airplane. And has been integrated with the ability to carry and employ precision-guided munitions including the Griffin missile and the GBU-39 small diameter bomb. It operates primarily at night using a suite of advanced electro-optical and infrared sensors that allow it to identify, track, and engage targets with a level of precision that is genuinely extraordinary.
Against fast attack craft operating at night in the Persian Gulf, which is exactly the operational environment the IRGC Navy prefers, the AC-130J is a nightmare scenario. You can’t see it. You can’t hear it until it’s too late. And by the time you know it’s there, the 105-mm howitzer has already solved your problem permanently.
Beyond those two platforms, the broader US force posture in the region as of May 2026 includes, based on publicly confirmed reporting from USNI News, Stars and Stripes, and CENTCOM public affairs releases, at least one carrier strike groups in the broader Middle East theater, multiple guided missile destroyers and cruisers with Tomahawk strike capability, MH-60 Seahawk helicopters operating from surface combatants specifically configured for maritime interdiction operations, and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft providing persistent surveillance across the Gulf’s key choke points. The P-8, for those unfamiliar, is essentially the military version of a Boeing 737 loaded with sensors, sonobuoys, and anti-surface weapons. It can track surface vessels, submarines, and small craft simultaneously across a massive area.
In an environment where the IRGC is trying to operate fast attack swarms, P-8 coverage means there’s very little they can do without being seen, tracked, and targeted before they even reach their objective. And then, there are the Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters that have been quietly forward deployed to Gulf region bases.
The Apache carries Hellfire missiles, laser-guided with a warhead specifically designed to defeat armored vehicles, and a 30-mm M230 chain gun. Against an IRGC fast attack boat, a single Hellfire is overkill. Against a swarm of fast attack boats attempting a coordinated harassment operation, a flight of Apaches with full Hellfire loadouts is a force multiplication tool that changes the entire tactical math of the engagement.
The IRGC knows this, which is likely part of why the Our Chan seizure was conducted the way it was, quietly, at night, against an apparently undefended target rather than as an open military confrontation with US forces in the area. Because here is the operational reality that Iran’s military planners have to contend with every single day right now.
The US military in this theater isn’t just capable of defeating the mosquito fleet in a direct engagement. It’s capable of doing it fast, doing it comprehensively, and doing it in a way that leaves very little of that fleet functional afterward. The IRGC fast attack force is dangerous in the context of harassment, intimidation, and occasional seizure of undefended vessels.
It is not dangerous in the context of direct sustained engagement with the full weight of US air power, naval firepower, and precision strike capability. And both sides know that, which is precisely why Iran keeps operating in the gray zone below the threshold of direct military confrontation, above the threshold of normal maritime commerce.
The Our Chon seizure was a gray zone operation, bold, brazen, strategically timed, and carefully calibrated to stay just below the level that triggers a kinetic US response. The question now is whether that calculation is about to change. So, here we are. May 15th, 2026. A Chinese-operated floating armory has been seized by the IRGC Navy in waters 38 mi off the UAE coast.
The Trump-Xi summit has produced public agreements that Iran immediately stress tested within hours of the readout being published. Iran’s rhetoric is at the most aggressive level of this entire conflict. The US military has a fully assembled multi-platform strike architecture sitting in the theater. And somewhere between all of those moving pieces is the answer to the question that actually matters.
Where does this go from here? Because the strategic picture right now isn’t just about one seized vessel. It’s about what that vessel represents, what it signals about Iran’s trajectory, and what the next 30 to 60 days look like for the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear negotiations, and the broader regional order.
So, let’s do what the mainstream coverage won’t do and actually think this through completely. Start with the floating armory itself, because the contents of that vessel matter enormously, and we still don’t have a complete picture of what was on board. What we know from UKMTO confirmation and maritime security industry reporting is that floating armories in this region are typically stocked with a standardized set of defensive weapons for commercial vessel protection.
That baseline inventory usually includes semi-automatic rifles, quantities. It also typically includes non-lethal deterrents, long-range acoustic devices, water cannons, razor wire deployment kits, standard stuff, defensive stuff. That’s the publicly acknowledged inventory profile for a vessel like the Our Chan.
But, here’s what the maritime security industry doesn’t always advertise publicly. And what makes this particular seizure so potentially significant. Higher-tier floating armory contracts, the one serving vessels transiting the highest-risk corridors, can include heavier weapons. Rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns in the 12.7 mm and 14.5 mm range.
And in some documented cases, more advanced defensive systems that I’ll let your imagination fill in. We don’t know exactly what configuration the Our Chan was carrying. What we do know is that the IRGC didn’t send a boarding party 38 mi into UAE-adjacent waters during a US-China summit for a crate of shotguns. They went because they knew what was on that ship, and that knowledge had to come from somewhere.
Which brings us back to the China question, and I want to be precise here because this matters. I’m not saying China ordered the seizure. I’m not saying Xi Jinping picked up a phone and called IRGC Navy Command said, “Go get that ship.”
What I am saying, and what the circumstantial evidence strongly supports, I mean, is that China had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to ensure that the right information reached the right people at the right time. China has extensive intelligence relationships throughout the Gulf maritime security industry. Chinese shipping companies, Chinese port operators, and Chinese maritime security contractors have deep visibility into vessel movements, cargo manifests, and anchorage positions across the entire region. If a Chinese-operated floating armory was sitting at a specific anchorage 38 mi northeast of Fujairah, the precise coordinates of that vessel were known to the operating company, logged in Chinese maritime databases, and accessible through channels that the IRGC has well-documented relationships with. You don’t need a direct order. You just need a coordinate shared on the right platform at the right moment, and then you take your smoke break. And then you act surprised when the armory goes missing. The strategic logic for China here is actually quite coherent when you look at it from Beijing’s perspective.
China has two competing interests in the situation that are pulling in opposite directions. On one hand, China genuinely needs the Strait of Hormuz open for its own energy imports. Roughly 40% of China’s crude oil imports transit the strait. A permanently closed strait hurts China, too, arguably as much as it hurts anyone.
So, China has a real interest in eventual stability. On the other hand, China does not want the United States to be the party that opens the strait and
