It’s inferences and guesses based on rumors and, possibly, second-tier inside information; no cameras and tape recorders have been following Xi Jinping and other CCP leaders around.
However, all the semi-verified indications are that Chinese Communist Party officials were shocked by the American-Israeli attack on Iran and that Xi Jinping even became physically ill. Lei of Lei’s Real Talk, who has been tracking and interpreting political tensions within the Chinese Communist Party for months, now offers musings about the psycho-repercussions of Operation Epic Fury for Beijing (“How a Strike in Tehran Triggered Panic in Zhongnanhai,” March 3, 2026).
James Roth has explained here that the loss of another source of oil is not a very big problem for Beijing. Nor, says Lei, is the CCP most viscerally jolted by the strategic damage of losing Iran, which could always be relied upon to cause big trouble for China’s adversaries.
What’s really scaring them is how Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and some forty other senior Iranian officials, including top military leaders and former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were killed almost immediately in the attack. In part by hijacking Iran’s own means of surveilling the Iranian people.
Shaken
Speaking on March 3, Lei said that “for the past couple of days, Xi Jinping has reportedly been deeply shaken.”
The military superiority evinced by the U.S. and Israel during Operation Midnight Hammer back in June 2025 “was significant” for Zhongnanhai, sure.
“But this time is different. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, is more destabilizing than a supreme leader being killed in the first few minutes of a war…. And it wasn’t just one person. More than forty Iranian officials of comparable rank reportedly died alongside him. And that is not a battlefield loss. That’s regime decapitation…. It would be like the entire Politburo and all of the Central Military Commission gone in one wave….
“Whether CCP leaders blindly trusted their own analysts or simply refused to accept reality, they did not believe the Iranian leadership would fall so quickly…. Xinhua reportedly submitted two internal reports directly to Xi Jinping, and he was shocked. CCTV’s frontline war correspondents also produced a 15-minute internal documentary about Khamenei’s death….
“According to circulating accounts, Xi Jinping, his wife, and members of the Politburo Standing Committee watched the CCTV [China Central Television] documentary together. The video reportedly showed in detail how ground personnel searched for the supreme leader’s body. The images were described as graphic and disturbing. It was said that Xi’s wife found it so upsetting that Xi stepped away. Now, there are even claims that the viewing had a psychological impact on Xi Jinping…. No details were shared, but according to the source, there were medical consequences. Or at least doctors were called….
“It was said that Xi Jinping did not sleep well for two days, and then he made a major policy shift. The Chinese embassy in Tehran was reportedly ordered to destroy all contracts and documents related to supersonic weapons sales to Iran…. And wolf warrior diplomats were instructed to deny that China had any military plans with Iran.”
Problems
Xi’s current predicament, which includes the fact that he’s supposed to be meeting U.S. Commander in Chief Donald Trump at the end of March, “appears to stem from a series of misjudgments and intelligence failures. Two sources say that before the air strikes, the CCP leadership held an optimistic assessment of the situation. They believed the United States and Israel would not carry out a decapitation strike. They assumed the conflict would remain at the level of deterrence and pressure, not a direct hit on the core of Iran’s power structure. Well, that assumption proved wrong, very wrong.”
Also, “In recent years, Iran had reportedly received technical support from China in security fields, particularly in safeguarding the top leaders’ personal safety. Iran has relied on Beijing for that, yet none of that prevented the precision strike. And so, according to insiders, that outcome also shattered Beijing’s confidence in its own technological cooperation capabilities.”
It’s not about oil. “It’s about regime survival…. Right now, insiders say Beijing is trying to balance three things at once: maintain cooperation or ties with Tehran, avoid direct confrontation with Washington, and prevent domestic public opinion from becoming unstable….
“If you really look at the Soviet collapse, it was the result of external pressure plus internal fractures. Which is exactly what Beijing is experiencing right now. And that’s why the Soviet collapse is being used internally as a warning model. For Beijing, what is happening in Iran is not just a regional war, it’s an external projection of regime risk. What Beijing fears is the demonstration effect of the development in Iran.”
Lei discusses a few other current headaches for Xi, like his succession problem and opposition to Xi within the military exacerbated by Xi’s detention just weeks ago of two top commanders.
Toward the end of her report, Lei stresses the possibility that a future attack on Beijing would use the Chinese Communist Party’s own surveillance net to minutely track CCP officials the way Israel used Tehran’s own cameras to track the mullahs.
“China has way more surveillance cameras than Iran. China has allegedly 700 million surveillance cameras across the country. They’re used to monitor citizens. If foreign intelligence ever gained access, then that same system could theoretically map the movements of top officials and their bodyguards and their aides…. The CCP built this massive surveillance system only to find out that it could turn back and become a lethal weapon against the leaders.”
