US empire keeps on getting distracted, that's good for China. The geostrategic benefit of US confined to Europe is immeasurable and worth every risk of sanctions if means propping up Russia economically or even militarily via third-parties like NK or Iran.
In a way, I think China, Russia and Iran have formed an understanding that all 3 parties wants to maintain steady pressure on the US to pin it across the map and prevent it from gathering its strength to focus on any one of the three.
If the US abandons 2 of the 3 ‘fronts’ to focus on one, that front will be hard pressed to resist or defeat them. This is actually what the US wanted to do - temporarily abandon Europe and the ME to focus all of its might into destroying China, the only one of the 3 that has the potential to comprehensively outclass the US in the long run. Once the threat of China’s rise has been defeated, Russia and Iran will need to fall in line or be destroyed in turn. Hence the pivot to Asia.
But unfortunately for the US, all three of its rivals also knows this calculation, which is why both Russia and Iran are actively playing spoiler and applying maximum pressure short of forcing the US to commit to keep their ‘fronts’ to keep it distracted and continue to run down the clock until China grows strong enough to defeat it not just regionally, but also globally.
This is a big reason why Iran is taking the humiliation and not striking back at Israel and also why Russia is not desperate for direct Chinese military assistance to bring overwhelming pressure on the Ukraine front.
In a funny way, the three are playing hot potato between themselves while the US is stuck in the middle endlessly running in circles like a simple dog trying to chase down the ball only to have it tossed to someone else as soon as it got close.
