China supplying gasoline to Iran
Worried about how Iranians will drive their cars under a sanctions regime? Worry no more. China is supplying Iran with enough gasoline (petrol) to render sanctions meaningless. Chinese state companies this month began supplying petrol to Iran and now provide up to one-third of its imports in a development that threatens to undermine US-led efforts to shut off the supply of fuel on which its economy depends.Read the whole thing.
The sales come in spite of moves over the past year by international companies, including BP and Reliance of India, to stop selling petrol to Iran, and highlight the difficulties of implementing sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Traders and bankers familiar with Iran’s purchasing said the gap left by the withdrawal of such long-standing suppliers had been filled by Chinese petrol this month.
...
The White House on Tuesday said that at a meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao, President Barack Obama had been “forceful” in calling for more co-operation from Beijing over Iran.
Oil traders said that Chinese-state owned oil companies were selling the petrol through intermediaries. The sales are legal as fuel imports are not at present included in sanctions against the country.
A Chinese official in Washington said: “Chinese enterprises conduct normal trade relations with Iran, strictly speaking within the relevant UN resolutions.
“On the UN side, the Chinese government position on the Iranian nuclear issue has been very consistent and clear: China has been working with the relevant parties together for the peaceful resolution of the issue through diplomatic means.”
Other Asian and European oil companies and trading houses also sell petrol to Tehran.
The diplomatic efforts being expended on imposing sanctions on Iran are a waste of time. The only way they will ever be enforced is if the United States and its allies are willing to impose a blockade on the Straits of Hormuz (the entrance to the Persian Gulf) to prevent supplies from reaching Iran at all. A blockade like that would be an act of war and Iran would likely respond as if its nuclear facilities had been bombed. So we end up at war anyway.
What could go wrong?
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:38 PM
1 Comments:
I'm off topic here but Barry Rubin just wrote an interesting post about the contradiction between Obumbler's commandist style and his inability to get the world to fear him:
This might wow them in elite salons of the United States but in lots of other countries, people have to lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from laughing.
There's more in this wonderful post. If you think the Obama presidency is satire meets reality, you might be more right than you think.
Read it all
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