The cost of shipping oil from Iran to China, its main buyer, has surged by over a third due to sanctions targeting over 183 Russian and Iranian tankers trying to sell oil clandestinely, according to Reuters as reported by Iran International.
The United States has reportedly sanctioned over a hundred tankers used by Iran to transport oil to China, its largest customer by far, in an effort to secure funds for a country struggling with rampant inflation, a collapsing currency, and fuel shortages.
According to a previous Iran International report, China was attempting to modernize the "teapot" refineries which buy Iranian oil or force them to shut down, reducing the amount of lower-grade oil they would be interested in buying.
Now it reports that China is increasingly uninterested in running afoul of US sanctions and prefers to buy its fuel and oil from Middle Eastern countries and ships which are not subject to sanctions.
Iran's daily oil exports to China have fallen by about half a million barrels over the past three months compared to previous months, reaching 1.3 million barrels, Kpler’s data shows.
Most of the aging tankers used to bypass sanctions, managed by non-Western companies, operate clandestinely by turning off their automatic identification systems to smuggle oil to markets in India and China, markets which are now increasingly out of their reach.
Iran is increasingly desperate to sell as much oil as it can before President-elect Trump is inaugurated on January 20, as both Trump himself and his Middle East advisers have said he intends to return to a policy of "maximum pressure" sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons program and support for terrorist proxy armies throughout the region.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is interviewing for NBC tomorrow (Wednesday), where he will insist that Iran seeks peace and cooperation with the nations of the world and that it is Israel which seeks all-out conflict.
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