Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Page 11 From the series News from the Silk Road Zheng Yongnian, a senior political analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen, and a figure to whom the Politburo lends an ear, reflects on the unexpected consequences of the American attack on Iran. The backdrop of the attack is the erosion of the framework established by the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but the catalyst for the crisis is the transformation of the United States from a nuclear guarantor into a destructive factor in the world order. According to Zheng, it is foreseeable that the United States’ attack on Iran’s three nuclear plants will inevitably lead to a new wave of nuclear proliferation all over the world . The NPT framework was the expression of the five postwar powers legitimately armed with nuclear bombs: the US, the USSR, China, France, and the UK. Four countries which did not sign the treaty represent the exception: Isra...