How China Keeps Iran's Oil Industry Afloat

“One particular Iranian ship that might be part of the ghost fleet of tankers, it would get loaded with Iranian crude and move from the Persian Gulf... and then it might go to the Gulf Of Oman to the middle of the sea. And at that point, it might turn off a tracking system that it's supposed to have on the, on the tanker that reports its whereabouts. And at that point, maybe you might see another ship tie it's tied up to the to the first ship, and you'd see the crude move between the different ships, and that's called a ship to ship transfer.”

“China's position on US sanctions is that they don't support them, and they think that they're a unilateral move by The US, and that's US policy, but that and that they don't have to enforce US sanctions. For China, it's also geopolitical. China has a far deeper relationship with Iran than just, buying its oil. ... China saw the opportunity, not only to get cheap oil, but to help a friend, and at the same time, undermine US interests.”

“The teapots are a set of refineries, based largely based in one province in Northeastern China called Shandong. ... what happened over time, as you saw, the government increase the quotas for these teapots to import Iranian oil. And what that meant is that more oil moved from the state owned giants who essentially exited the market along with Western countries and Asian nations that were buying Iranian oil. And these private teapot refineries took over, essentially.”

“In some cases, proceeds from the oil sales are sent directly to Chinese construction companies who take the money as payment for building infrastructure in Iran. So there's this barter system that means that that, money never even has to touch the international financial system and and be overseen by The US. One of the other things it could do is it gets paid for the oil in a in a bank account in China, and then it could use that money to procure things in China that, Iranian importers need.”

“But what The US blockade has demonstrated is that quite easily you can use force to disrupt that entire operation and, and the threat of force even because you don't necessarily even have to, intercept ships to do that. You just have to create a sense of fear that The US will. ... The blockade, at least for now, is ensuring that Iran can't export oil and therefore it loses access to its financial lifeline.”

“What you might just see as a result of all of this is that there is this this push by these countries, this anti U. S. Bloc, you know, led by countries like China and Russia and Iran to create systems that cut out The U. S. Entirely and cut out the U. S. Dollar. And so mean that there's less oversight by Washington of what countries around the world are doing.”