Analysis. This is the author’s reading of the news beside Daniel 2 and Daniel 7. It is an argument about positioning and potential, not a claim that any prophecy has been fulfilled. Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV).
On Tuesday in Rome, Pakistan’s defense minister gave what AP called “one of Islamabad’s clearest indications yet” that it could be drawn directly into the widening war. Asked whether Pakistan had joined airstrikes in Yemen, Khawaja Muhammad Asif said Pakistan will use “whatever means are available” to defend Saudi Arabia against the Iran-backed Houthis. “Any enemy of Saudi Arabia is enemy of Pakistan. That should be very clear,” he said.
Read quickly, that sounds like a Sunni bloc squaring up against Iran. Read more slowly, I think it points somewhere else: toward a capital that isn’t in the pact at all.
What the report says, and what it leaves out
The Associated Press report, published by POLITICO, is careful. Asif “declined to say whether Pakistani forces had already participated in airstrikes.” He “did not say whether Saudi Arabia… had asked for assistance.” He tied Pakistan’s pledge to the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed on Aug. 7. That agreement declares “that an attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all three.” Asif said the alliance reflects a belief that “existing security arrangements had failed to protect Gulf countries.” He also suggested that the Houthis and some Iraqi militias may now act with real independence from Tehran: “Some of these proxies, they become rogue.”
In the same interview, he said Pakistan is still “pressing for negotiations to end the broader conflict involving Iran” and supports reviving a nuclear agreement.
The report never mentions China. China didn’t sign the pact and isn’t part of it. I want to be clear about that from the start, because the argument that follows is about leverage from outside, not membership.
The supply line runs through Beijing
Pakistan pledges the means, but where do its means come from? The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute gives an exact answer. In its March 2026 arms-transfer data, SIPRI reports that China supplied 80 per cent of Pakistan’s arms imports in 2021–25, up from 73 per cent in 2016–20. The dependence runs both ways. SIPRI’s fact sheet notes that “61 per cent of [China’s] arms exports went to just one state: Pakistan.”
Chinese hardware is already on Saudi soil, in Pakistani hands. In May, Reuters reported, citing five sources, that Pakistan had deployed around 8,000 troops to Saudi Arabia, along with “a full squadron of around 16 aircraft, mostly JF-17 fighters made jointly with China,” and “a Chinese HQ-9 air defence system.” The equipment “is operated by Pakistani personnel and financed by Saudi Arabia.” That deployment came under the bilateral Pakistan–Saudi pact signed last year, before the three-way Mecca agreement existed.
My reading goes beyond the reporting here, so I’ll label it as mine. A country that supplies four-fifths of a partner’s imported arms doesn’t need a seat at that partner’s table to shape what it does. Beijing can’t order Islamabad to break faith with Riyadh. But if a defensive shield ever turned into a sustained campaign against Iran itself, Pakistan would have to ask where the next shipment was coming from. China has no hand on the trigger, but it holds a great deal of influence over what Pakistan’s forces have to fire.
Why Beijing needs Iran standing
Why would China care whether Iran is pressed too hard? Oil, and the water it travels on.
Reuters reports that Chinese purchases “accounted for more than 80% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports in 2025, averaging about 1.4 million barrels per day,” according to Kpler. AP calls Beijing “the biggest purchaser of sanctioned Iranian oil”. According to diplomats who spoke to AP, Beijing “used its leverage to urge the Iranians back to the negotiating table for historic face-to-face talks in Pakistan.” The same AP report says Wang Yi hosted Pakistan’s foreign minister “to present a five-point proposal calling for an end to hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” and that Xi Jinping “called for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen.”
The same Reuters story quotes a Western diplomat: “Tehran and Beijing need each other.” China, Reuters adds, “is among the few countries with the financial capacity to provide the investment Tehran needs to sustain its oil industry.”
Beijing’s stake in the Gulf is wider than Iran, though. Reuters notes that roughly half of China’s oil imports come from the region, and quotes Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, who warns that Iran’s Hormuz leverage “begins hurting the very power Tehran increasingly depends on.” And the war has already cost China. The National, citing Kpler, reports that Chinese imports of Iranian crude through Hormuz averaged about 530,000 barrels a day in July and August, “48 per cent below pre-war levels.”
So China needs two things at once: an Iran that doesn’t collapse, and a Gulf that doesn’t burn. In my reading, that is exactly the posture of a power positioned to shield, not to fight. Beijing would keep Tehran from being crushed while restraining the war around it.
The lion made to stand
In the teaching line we hold at Revelation Rosetta Stone, Daniel 7’s first beast and Daniel 2’s head of gold point to the same kingdom, and its primary potential today is China:
“The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.” (Daniel 7:4, NKJV)
We have been tracking one sign of that standing: other nations routing their decisions through Beijing. In recent months the steps have piled up. In March, Pakistan, the main U.S.–Iran mediator, brought its foreign minister to Beijing for Wang Yi’s Hormuz proposal. On Sept. 17, Reuters reported, citing three Iranian sources, that Saudi Arabia appealed to Beijing after the Houthi advance, and that China privately asked Tehran to help rein the group in. Last December, Thailand and Cambodia took their ceasefire to talks hosted by Wang Yi in Yunnan.
Look at who is in that list. The two main parties to the Mecca pact, Riyadh and Islamabad, have each turned to Beijing this year. So the lion doesn’t need to join their alliance. It is already standing where both of them come to it.
The leopard and the bronze
We read the third beast the same way, with Iran as its primary potential:
“After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it.” (Daniel 7:6, NKJV)
In Daniel 2 that same kingdom is the bronze: “This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze” (Daniel 2:32, NKJV). The leopard’s wings are reach. The AP report describes the Houthis capturing Mokha and “extending their reach toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” while Hormuz is already under pressure. We read proxies as wings, never as heads. Asif’s “rogue” line is a fair caution against assuming Tehran commands every wing.
Here is the heart of my thesis. Daniel saw one image. The gold and the bronze stand on the same body. If that picture is for our time, I would expect the head to have reasons to keep the belly from being broken off before the image’s appointed end. Beijing’s oil and Hormuz stake, together with its hold on Pakistan’s arsenal, is one such reason, and it is visible in the news now. That makes it potential, not a completed image.
What I am not saying
The same passage goes on: “its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay” (Daniel 2:33, NKJV). In our reading, the iron legs and the feet of iron and clay are future only. The Mecca pact isn’t the iron, and it isn’t the feet. Turkey isn’t the iron either, and no present nation or bloc fills that place. The image isn’t complete, and the stone “cut out without hands” (Daniel 2:34) hasn’t struck. Nothing in this week’s news changes any of that.
Asif’s claim that “existing security arrangements had failed” will sound familiar to readers of The Fifth Beast of Daniel 7, where we argued that the reigning superpower must eventually step aside. But a defense minister’s verdict is not an American exit. The same AP report notes that indirect U.S.–Iran talks “have resumed through mediators.”
The honest limit
Nothing in the reporting shows China protecting Iran. The Rome story doesn’t mention China at all. In the one case where Beijing did act, Reuters says it pressed Iran to restrain the Houthis on Saudi Arabia’s behalf. Even there, “Chinese officials did not issue any explicit threats,” and analysts told Reuters that “the key test will be whether China is prepared to attach consequences to its demands.” China’s own Iranian oil buying has nearly halved. And Pakistan’s pledge points against Iran’s proxy, not toward Tehran.
So this is a reading of positioning. China holds the supply line to the pact’s strongest military member, and it has every economic reason to keep Iran from collapse. If the Mecca pact ever moves from shielding Saudi cities to breaking Iran, I expect Beijing’s leverage over Pakistan to come into play. It hasn’t been used yet.
What to watch
- A reported Chinese move to restrain, resupply or condition Pakistan’s forces in Saudi Arabia.
- China brokering directly between Riyadh or Islamabad and Tehran.
- Beijing attaching real consequences, for or against Iran, to its private messages.
Watch. Weigh the reporting. Test the paradigm. And don’t mistake a head that is positioned to guard for a head that has already moved.
— Revelation Rosetta Stone Staff
Sources
- Associated Press via POLITICO, “Pakistan vows to defend Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed Houthis by ‘whatever means’,” Sept. 29, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/29/pakistan-saudi-arabia-houthis-01098484
- SIPRI, “Global arms flows jump nearly 10 per cent as European demand soars,” press release, March 2026. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2026/global-arms-flows-jump-nearly-10-cent-european-demand-soars
- SIPRI, “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025,” fact sheet, March 2026. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/fs_2603_at_2025.pdf
- Reuters, “Pakistan deploys jet squadron, thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia during Iran war,” May 18, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-deploys-jet-squadron-thousands-troops-saudi-arabia-during-iran-war-2026-05-18/
- Reuters, “China presses Iran to help rein in Houthis after Saudi appeal, sources say,” Sept. 17, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-presses-iran-help-rein-houthis-after-saudi-appeal-sources-say-2026-09-17/
- AP, “A look at China’s behind-the-scenes role in Iran war diplomacy,” April 2026. https://apnews.com/article/china-iran-us-war-behind-scenes-diplomacy-64ffed10e021be660b3fb97f6f8647e9
- The National, “China’s Iranian oil imports nearly halve since war,” Aug. 26, 2026. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2026/08/26/chart-of-the-week-chinas-iranian-oil-imports-nearly-halve-since-war/
- Reuters, “Thailand, Cambodia will gradually consolidate ceasefire, China says,” Dec. 29, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thailand-cambodia-will-gradually-consolidate-ceasefire-china-says-2025-12-29/ (see also China MFA, “Foreign Ministers of China, Cambodia, and Thailand Hold Trilateral Meeting,” Dec. 29, 2025: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/wjbzhd/202512/t20251229_11789862.html)
- Revelation Rosetta Stone, “The Fifth Beast of Daniel 7,” June 24, 2026. https://revelationrosettastone.blog/2026/06/24/the-fifth-beast-of-daniel-7/
- Scripture: Daniel 2:32–34; Daniel 7:4, 7:6 (NKJV). https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel%202%3A31-35%3BDaniel%207%3A4-6&version=NKJV