The vast majority of Iranian oil cargoes remain destined for China, despite the US government saying a relaxation of sanctions on Iran would redirect supply to other markets, researchers have found. The US Department of the Treasury issued a general licence on March 20 allowing the sale and delivery of previously sanctioned Iranian oil and petroleum products, including cargoes transported via ‘dark fleet’ vessels, provided they had been loaded…
How dare they do business with their allies instead of people who they are actively at war with
I think the idea here is that the US tried to undercut the chinese, in a way: ‘look, everyone can buy iranian oil now! make sure to bid for it and fuck over the chinese!’. But it’s not like everyone is gonna go all in on a trade relationship that as far as they are concerned, the US will just re-sanction a month from now. The economies of Asia might get desperate enough all things considered, but can they out-bid the world’s largest economy?
Ironically enough, the Japanese government seems to have rejected Iran by rejecting the deal of letting tankers headed for Japan pass if they were being paid in yuan.
So basically Japan, in subservience to the US (and probably south Korea too) are willing to commit economic suicide. That’s the other part of this.
The shipments are also likely safer on Chinese ships. They don’t seem willing to poke that bear – yet.