The European Union, that earnest guardian of what it claims to be rules and norms, has just slapped sanctions on two Chinese companies and an Iranian company over alleged cyberattacks. No United Nations mandate. No multilateral consensus.

By imposing baseless sanctions on Chinese and Iranian entities in tandem at this sensitive moment when the transatlantic alliance is again being tested, the EU is unmistakably laying bare its unspoken judgment of who are fighting in the same trench on an invisible front with the West.

Although the EU didn’t blame China for the Iran conflict, which China didn’t start, isn’t fighting, and has been trying to stop, some media outlets in the EU and elsewhere in the West are chopping and changing among three tidy but false narratives about China, presenting it as the failure, the culprit, or the opportunistic beneficiary. Having picked their villain, they spin their headline. Something they have done over the Ukraine crisis toward China.

According to the “China failure” story line, Beijing’s supposed grand strategy of anchoring itself in Iran is collapsing under the weight of war. The problem? That strategy exists only in the imaginations of those who see global politics as a chessboard where every piece must belong to someone.

Then there’s the “China responsibility” story, which insists that because China talks to Iran, trades with Iran and does not treat diplomacy like a loyalty test, it must somehow answer for Iran’s actions. This is geopolitics of guilt-by-association, a logic that would be laughable if it weren’t so persistent.

If responsibility is to be assigned for this war, one might begin with those who launched strikes without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. But that would require an uncomfortable shift in focus — from Beijing to Washington and Tel Aviv.

The third story, “China the winner”, paints Beijing as quietly profiting while others bleed, as if war were a quarterly earnings report. This says less about China and more about those advancing a worldview in which every crisis must produce a beneficiary and every beneficiary must be suspect if it’s not the West.

The reality is far less theatrical. There are no real winners — unless one counts the merchants of arms from the US.

Meanwhile, China has been doing all it can to promote a ceasefire through diplomatic channels. Phone calls with related stakeholders. A special envoy shuttling across capitals. Calls at the UN Security Council for ceasefire, for respect of sovereignty, for restraint. Humanitarian aid has been dispatched to Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. It’s not glamorous work. It doesn’t lend itself to viral social media clips or dramatic headlines. But it is essential work if you are trying to stop a war.

Which brings us back to Brussels and its unilateral sanctions. The EU should correct course and return to something resembling constructive engagement, as a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged. This requires cooperation and trust.

With people in the Middle East once again bearing the costs of decisions made far beyond their borders, the least the rest of the world can do is join hands and do the hard work of trying to end the conflict instead of propping it up with falsehoods.