Chinese officials have also taken the position that while the West has imposed sanctions on oil sales by Iran because of its nuclear weapons development program, the United Nations has not done so. So China has felt no legal obligation to avoid buying Iranian oil, which sells at a steep discount to world prices because other countries shun it.
China has quadrupled imports of Iranian oil in the nearly two years since brokering Iran’s peace deal with Saudi Arabia, and last year it bought more than 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, according to Kpler, a firm in Vienna that specializes in tracking Iran’s oil shipments. Oil sales to China by Iran’s state-owned oil sector represent more than 5 percent of the entire Iranian economy, and they pay for much of the operations of the Iranian government.
Iran has experienced a series of setbacks, including an Israeli air raid against Tehran’s air defenses and the defeat by Israel of Iran’s main ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. China responded by sending one of its four vice premiers, Zhang Guoqing, to meet President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran in Tehran last month.
“China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and its legitimate rights and interests,” Mr. Zhang said in Tehran.
Andon Pavlov, a senior analyst at Kpler, said Thursday that the Biden administration is expected to expand its blacklist of tankers that have carried Russian or Iranian oil, and that China is likely to bar these vessels from its ports. Reuters reported this week that officials in Shandong Province, the main Chinese entry point for Iranian oil, have begun barring blacklisted tankers from its ports.
