Why Iran Didn’t Walk Away
Trump tore up the nuclear deal in 2018. Tehran kept it alive for another year, and that was not weakness. It was strategy.
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | October 16, 2026
I’ve had this article sitting in storage waiting for the right moment to publish it. Tonight, Mario Nawfal hosted a debate on Iran that featured Robert Barnes and Matt Tardio. Matt put out so much disinformation and falsities that I believe now is the time to set the record straight about what happened to the JCPOA. I was tempted to attach the prefix, “RE” to Matt’s last name but decided not to go down the ad hominem path. Instead, let’s just deal with the facts.
On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement that Iran had signed with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China three years earlier. He reimposed every sanction the deal had lifted and then piled on more under a policy he called “maximum pressure.” Iran had not violated the agreement. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which had inspectors at every Iranian nuclear site, had certified again and again that Iran was keeping its side of the bargain.
Most people in Washington expected Tehran to respond in kind: throw out the inspectors, restart the centrifuges and race for the bomb. Some in the administration hoped it would, because that would have justified the next step. Iran did the opposite. For a full year it continued to abide by every limit in the agreement, keeping its enrichment at 3.67%, its stockpile under 300 kilograms and its doors open to the IAEA. Understanding why tells you a great deal about how Iran’s leaders actually think, and it undercuts the caricature of a reckless regime that dominates American commentary.
It put the United States in the wrong
The first reason was legitimacy. By staying in the deal, Iran turned the dispute from “Iran versus the world” into “the United States versus everyone else.” Washington, not Tehran, was the party that had broken an agreement endorsed by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. Europe, Russia and China all said so. For the first time in decades Iran held the diplomatic high ground, and its leaders understood that giving it up would reunite the coalition that had sanctioned them before 2015.
That calculation paid off in a way few predicted. In August 2020 the Trump administration tried to invoke the deal’s “snapback” clause to restore all UN sanctions on Iran. Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council rejected the move, on the grounds that the United States had left the agreement and could not use its provisions. Had Iran walked out in 2018, the snapback would have been automatic and unanimous. Patience bought Iran protection at the United Nations.
It gave Europe a chance to deliver
The second reason was economic hope. The deal’s value to Iran was sanctions relief, and the Europeans promised to preserve some of it. They created a special trade channel, INSTEX, designed to let European companies do business with Iran without exposure to American sanctions. Tehran gave Europe time to make it work. It never did. INSTEX completed its first transaction, a shipment of medical supplies, only in March 2020, and European companies fled Iran rather than risk being cut off from the American market and the dollar. Iran’s oil exports collapsed from about 2.5 million barrels a day to a few hundred thousand. But Iran’s leaders had to test the European promise before they could declare it worthless, and they did.
It denied Washington and Israel a pretext
The third reason was security. Iran’s leaders knew that any visible move toward a bomb would be used to justify military strikes. Hawks in Washington and Jerusalem had argued for years that the deal only delayed the inevitable; an Iranian walkout would have proved their case. By staying inside the agreement, with inspectors on the ground, Iran made it far harder to sell a war. The IAEA’s reports were Iran’s best defense.
This was consistent with the position Iran’s leadership has held publicly for two decades. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued a religious ruling forbidding nuclear weapons, and Iran remained a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty throughout. Whatever one thinks of the sincerity of that position, Iran’s conduct after May 2018 matched it.
It bet on outlasting Trump
The fourth reason was time. Iran’s leaders had watched American politics closely, and they knew presidents come and go. The deal had been negotiated by one administration and abandoned by the next; it could be restored by a third. Staying in the agreement kept that door open. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had staked their political careers on the deal, and they argued that Iran should wait out Trump rather than burn the bridge. Khamenei, who had always been skeptical of American promises, allowed them to make that case. It was a wager that the United States would return to its word.
Why the patience ran out
Iran’s patience was not unlimited, and it was never unconditional. On May 8, 2019, exactly one year after Trump’s announcement, Rouhani said Iran would begin to scale back its commitments in stages. Iran invoked paragraph 36 of the deal itself, which allows a party to stop performing its obligations if another party is in significant non-compliance. Each step was announced in advance, carried out under IAEA observation and described as reversible the moment the United States returned and lifted sanctions. In July 2019 Iran exceeded the stockpile limit and enriched to 4.5%. In November it resumed enrichment at Fordow.
Then came the events that hardened Tehran. The United States killed General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in November 2020. The Natanz enrichment plant was sabotaged in April 2021. Each attack was answered with another step: 20% enrichment, the end of expanded inspections, and finally 60%. The Biden administration had a chance to restore the deal in Vienna in 2021 and 2022, and those talks collapsed too.
Sixty percent as leverage
The most alarming of Iran’s steps, the decision in April 2021 to enrich uranium to 60%, is usually cited as proof that Tehran was racing for a bomb. Look at the timing and the terms and it reads very differently. Talks to restore the deal opened in Vienna on April 6, 2021. Five days later the enrichment hall at Natanz was sabotaged in an attack widely attributed to Israel. Iran announced 60% enrichment two days after that.
The move was a message aimed at the negotiating table. Iran was telling the remaining parties, and the United States, that every month they failed to honor their commitments would cost them, and that the cost would rise. Iran’s government spokesman, Ali Rabiei, said publicly on April 20 that the step “can quickly be reversed” if the other parties returned to their obligations, and that enrichment would then go back to the level set in the 2015 accord. The parliament’s law of December 2020, which ordered higher enrichment and fewer inspections, was written the same way: it tied every escalation to the absence of sanctions relief.
That is leverage, not a breakout. Iran had watched Europe fail to deliver for three years and the United States refuse to return without new concessions. Staying at 3.67% had won it praise and nothing else. Raising the stakes was the only tool it had left to make the other signatories take their own commitments seriously. Iran enriched to 60% so that it would have something to give back.
What the critics will say
Critics make three arguments that challenge my thesis. The first is that Iran was provoking the United States all along through its missile program and its support for allies across the region. But neither was covered by the JCPOA. The deal was deliberately limited to the nuclear program because that was the only issue on which agreement was possible. Holding Iran responsible for breaking terms that were never in the agreement is not a fair test.
The second is that 60% enrichment has no civilian purpose. That is largely true, and it is the point. A bargaining chip has to be valuable to the other side, and 60% was valuable precisely because it worried Washington, Europe and Israel. Iran never enriched to 90%, never left the Non-Proliferation Treaty and never expelled inspectors during this period.
The third is that in early 2023 the IAEA found uranium particles enriched to 83.7% at Fordow. Iran said they were the result of unintended fluctuations in the enrichment process, and the agency did not report any stockpile at that level. Particles are not a stockpile, and a stockpile is not a weapon. Iran’s accumulated 60% material did grow, to about 87.5 kilograms by that report and far more later, and that growth was dangerous. But it was the predictable price of a policy of pressure that gave Iran no reason to stop.
The lesson
The record shows a government that responded to the breach of an international agreement with restraint, then with measured and reversible pressure, and only escalated after its economy had been strangled and its officers and scientists killed. That is not the behavior of a regime determined to build a bomb at the first opportunity. It is the behavior of a government that wanted the deal to survive and concluded, slowly, that the United States would not let it.
There is a lesson here for Washington. When the United States walked away from an agreement that was working, it did not get a better deal. It got an Iran with near-weapons-grade uranium, fewer inspectors and every reason to doubt American promises. Iran kept the JCPOA alive for a year after Trump abandoned it. The question we should be asking is not why Iran eventually stepped back, but why the United States walked away from a deal that was keeping Iran a year away from a bomb.
Turkiye revokes Iranian bank license under US sanctions campaign
The Cradle | September 19, 2026
The Turkish Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) revoked Iran’s Bank Mellat license, citing vague financial risks amid Washington’s economic sanctions campaign on Tehran, Turkiye’s Official Gazette reported on 18 September.
The regulator invoked Article 71(b) of Turkiye’s banking law, which allows a license to be revoked if a bank is deemed a threat to depositors or to the stability of the financial system, thereby ending the lender’s 44-year presence in the country.
The notice made no reference to US sanctions or to any operational failings at the bank’s Istanbul branch.
However, Bank Mellat, whose largest shareholder is the Iranian government, is under US, EU, and UK sanctions, according to the open-source sanctions-tracking database OpenSanctions.
Earlier this week, Ankara declared that Iran’s Mahan Air would be grounded starting 21 September, following Washington’s sanctions on three Turkish companies for providing services to the airline.
The US Treasury said Turkiye and Oman agreed to halt the flights following talks on complying with its sanctions.
“The risk now extends to every Turkish entity providing services to Mahan Air, from airport operations and ground handling to ticketing and banking,” one official warned.
The airline, which ran at least three daily flights between Istanbul and Tehran, is also suspending services to Oman and Georgia.
The revocation follows a string of punitive measures under Washington’s “Economic Outcast” operation, an economic strangulation campaign launched after the US failed to achieve its military objectives against Iran.
On 4 September, the US Treasury sanctioned Golden Global Bank, a small Turkish investment bank, along with two of its Istanbul-based units, accusing them of channeling tens of millions of dollars for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force.
Days earlier, the Treasury cut the UAE branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr off from dollar access over their dealings with Iran, the Financial Times reported on 28 August.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed to roll out new secondary sanctions every week, with banks first in line.
“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” he told AP.
Bessent has also repeatedly pressed Washington’s allies to intensify their own sanctions on Tehran, warning G20 finance chiefs they would face secondary sanctions of their own if they failed to cut ties.
Russia, China clash with West at UNSC over legality of Iran ‘snapback’ sanctions
Press TV – September 10, 2026
Russia and China have opposed the activation of the so-called snapback mechanism against Iran at a UN Security Council meeting, warning that Western attempts to reactivate the relevant UN sanctions regime would only further heighten divisions and undermine multilateral diplomacy.
The five permanent members of the Security Council engaged in a fierce procedural battle on Thursday over the legal validity of international sanctions against Tehran.
At the heart of the dispute is the “snapback” provision embedded in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was originally designed to automatically restore UN Chapter VII sanctions in the event of significant Iranian non-compliance, deliberately bypassing the veto power of permanent council members.
Despite fierce objections from Moscow and Beijing, the council voted 11-2 in favor of adopting the provisional agenda, with two abstentions.
Under UN rules, procedural votes require a minimum of nine affirmative votes and cannot be blocked by a permanent member’s veto.
‘Legal mandate expired’
Both Russia and China stressed that the legal framework for the snapback mechanism no longer exists.
They emphasized that UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA, officially expired on October 18, 2025.
Consequently, the nonproliferation agenda item regarding Iran was struck from the council’s list of active issues on that same day.
The Russian representative stated that because the resolution has expired, there are no legal or procedural grounds to reactivate the 1737 sanctions committee, which ceased to exist in 2015.
Moscow dismissed Western claims and UN Secretariat conclusions supporting the snapback as “biased and erroneous.”
China echoed the sentiments, expressing “grave concern” and “strong opposition” to the West’s maneuvers.
Beijing warned that forcing the reimposition of sanctions and convening meetings under a defunct agenda item would seriously impede any chances of a political settlement to the Iranian nuclear issue.
China called on all council members to respect the termination date outlined in Resolution 2231 to preserve the authority of the Security Council and the credibility of multilateral diplomacy.
Western powers defend sanctions regime
Western delegations, however, firmly rejected the Russian and Chinese legal challenges, insisting that the sanctions have been legitimately revived following Iran’s alleged breaches of the nuclear deal.
“The United Kingdom, with France and Germany, initiated the snapback mechanism in full accordance with Security Council Resolution 2231,” the British representative stated, arguing that the European troika (E3) acted in response to Iran’s “significant non-performance” under the 2015 pact.
London maintained that the snapback process officially concluded on September 28, 2025, keeping six Chapter VII resolutions in effect.
The US representative took a harder line, accusing Moscow and Beijing of attempting to undermine council decisions merely to shield Tehran.
“Regardless of such politically driven matters, the facts are the facts. The 1737 Committee exists,” the American diplomat asserted, pointing to recent IAEA reports claiming Iran remains non-compliant with its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement.
Tehran has consistently condemned the European troika’s actions, viewing the snapback maneuver as a politically motivated stunt orchestrated by Washington rather than a legitimate diplomatic tool.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei previously lashed out at the E3, describing their move as an act of “stubbornness” carried out to fulfill US orders without rational calculation.
He said that Britain, France, and Germany damaged their own credibility as parties to the JCPOA by misusing the snapback mechanism.
Baghaei emphasized that the E3’s illegal maneuver caused confusion within the UN system and creates no legal obligations for member states.
“In line with the preservation of the principles of the United Nations Charter, we expect countries to refrain from complying with the three European countries’ move, which is considered a form of imposition on the structure of the Security Council,” he said.
Warmongers in meltdown as Trump heralds Iran deal
In essence, this agreement brings the situation to where it was supposed to be following the announcement of the original ceasefire
By Trita Parsi | May 23, 2026
I wrote yesterday that the United States and Iran were on the verge of an agreement. Trump appeared to confirm as much a few hours ago with an unusually disciplined Truth Social post — grammatically coherent, diplomatically measured, and notably devoid of his customary theatrics or ritual humiliation of the opposing side.
That restraint matters. Unlike his earlier proclamations of imaginary breakthroughs, this statement carried the tone of a serious diplomatic signal rather than political indiscipline. Its timing, moreover, appeared disconnected from market considerations or domestic spectacle. My own sources in Tehran likewise confirm that a major breakthrough has been reached, though it remains contingent on final approval — precisely as Trump indicated.
So what does all of this mean? What do we actually know about the contours of the agreement? How significant was the role played by regional actors in securing the breakthrough, and what explains Europe’s near-total irrelevance in the process? If this arrangement is merely a Memorandum of Understanding, where do the principal vulnerabilities lie as negotiations enter a second phase?
Moreover, can Trump successfully sell the deal at home? What steps can — and likely will — Israel take to sabotage the agreement? And if a final deal is secured, how profound would Israel’s strategic defeat be?
Let me try to address these questions one by one.
First of all, the full details remain unclear. But according to reporting by Amwaj.media —much of which I have independently corroborated — the agreement entails a comprehensive cessation of hostilities, including in Lebanon; the gradual release of Iran’s frozen assets; and an end to America’s “blockade of the blockade” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Maritime traffic through the Strait would resume under joint Iranian and Omani oversight. Once these measures take effect, the parties would have an additional 30 days to negotiate a final agreement. That second-stage accord is expected to address both the nuclear issue and the long-term status of the Strait.
Significant progress, however, already appears to have been made on the nuclear file, and, as I understand it, broad principles for its resolution have largely been agreed upon.
In essence, this agreement restores the situation to where it was always supposed to be following the announcement of the original ceasefire. From the outset, the ceasefire was intended to be regional in scope and to include Lebanon. There was never supposed to be a “blockade of the blockade” — an absurd scheme concocted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that only served to undermine America’s strategic position.
Nor was commercial traffic through the Strait meant to remain disrupted. The genuinely new elements are limited sanctions relief for Tehran and a formal commitment to resolve the nuclear issue within the next 30 days.
Yet while reaching this point is undeniably significant, there is still no real deal until a final agreement is secured. And the 30-day window, though short, nevertheless offers ample opportunity for spoilers on all sides to sabotage the process.
The regional buy-in — and the fact that Trump announced the agreement only after speaking with a wide array of key regional leaders, including those of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain, in addition to a separate call with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu — is highly significant. This regional anchoring affords Trump a degree of political insulation in Washington. Faced with inevitable accusations from hawks that the agreement amounts to defeat or that it betrays Israel, he can point to broad regional support as evidence that America’s principal partners in the Middle East prefer diplomacy to escalation.
Indeed, compared to President Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement, the regional engagement surrounding Trump’s deal is objectively deeper, broader, and more politically consequential. Obama’s agreement was negotiated despite resistance from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE; Trump’s appears to be taking shape with active regional backing. Europe’s near-total absence from the process is nevertheless striking — though hardly problematic. By this point, Europe’s diplomatic irrelevance in major Middle Eastern diplomacy has become so normalized that its exclusion barely registers.
Judging by the public panic now emanating from Washington’s war hawks and pro-Israel circles, however, the next 30 days are likely to be politically brutal for Trump. FDD is already openly attacking him. AIPAC is amplifying lawmakers denouncing the agreement. An adviser to the former Crown Prince of Iran has accused Trump of “total surrender.” Many of the same allies who enthusiastically applauded Trump’s decision to initiate the war are now turning on him for choosing diplomacy over permanent escalation.
Senior Israeli politicians, however, may choose a more cautious approach. Rather than confronting Trump directly, they are likely to let their proxies in Washington wage the public battle on their behalf.
Israeli elections are approaching, and Trump remains deeply popular among Israeli voters, while Netanyahu has thus far failed to convert the popularity of the Iran war into a decisive electoral advantage. A direct public clash with Trump over the agreement could therefore prove politically dangerous for Netanyahu. Trump, if provoked, could inflict substantial damage simply by signaling support for one of Netanyahu’s challengers.
Trump may have hinted at this dynamic a few days ago when he — seemingly out of nowhere — told reporters that he enjoys a “99% approval rating” in Israel and could run for prime minister there himself. On the surface, it sounded like another episode of characteristic Trumpian bravado. But in context, it may well have been a pointed warning to Netanyahu and Israel’s political establishment that Trump can damage them far more than they can damage him.
There should be little doubt, however, that if a final agreement is reached — and any lasting agreement will almost certainly require substantial, if not total, sanctions relief for Iran — it would constitute a devastating strategic defeat for Tel Aviv.
Israel’s two wars have, paradoxically, strengthened Iran’s deterrence posture, exposed Israel’s inability to confront Iran without overwhelming American military backing, and inflicted incalculable damage on America’s global standing and aura of military supremacy.
Indeed, the cumulative effect may be so severe that the pursuit of uncontested American global primacy is no longer a realistic option. At the same time, support for Israel within the United States has eroded dramatically across nearly every demographic group except older Republican voters.
Most importantly, sanctions relief would liberate Iran’s economy from decades of constriction and gradually shift the regional balance of power away from Israel and its vision of a “Greater Israel.” For precisely that reason, Israel will almost certainly do everything within its power — behind the scenes — to sabotage the agreement before it becomes irreversible.
But Israel is not the only threat to the deal. Both Washington and Tehran will have to exercise extraordinary discipline to ensure that their competing narratives of victory do not strengthen the hardline opposition camp in the other country. Throughout the negotiations, Trump has shown remarkably little sensitivity to how his inflammatory social media posts complicate Tehran’s ability to compromise. Iran must now avoid making the same mistake. Public triumphalism in Tehran could easily undermine Trump’s political capacity to deliver the agreement domestically.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s recent tweet comparing the outcome of Trump’s war to the failed Roman attempts to subjugate the Sassanidian Persian Empire is a case in point. Whatever its domestic appeal in Iran, such rhetoric risks hardening opposition in Washington at precisely the moment when restraint and strategic ambiguity are most needed.
At the end of the day, for the Phase II negotiations to succeed — and for any agreement to prove durable — both sides must be able to claim victory.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Iraq, Pakistan ink Hormuz safe passage deals with Iran: Report
The Cradle | May 13, 2026
Iraq and Pakistan have reached separate arrangements with Iran to move crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz under Tehran’s new system for controlled passage through the strategic waterway, Reuters reported on 12 May.
The deals come as the US-Israeli war on Iran has sharply reduced energy exports from the Gulf, a region that normally supplies 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and LNG.
Claudio Steuer of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies told Reuters that “Iran has shifted from blocking Hormuz to controlling access to it … Hormuz is no longer a neutral transit route, it is a controlled corridor.”
Under this new framework, Iraq secured safe passage for two very large crude carriers, each carrying about 2 million barrels of crude, through the strait on Sunday.
An Iraqi oil ministry official said Baghdad is now seeking Iranian approval for additional shipments, as oil revenue makes up 95 percent of the Iraqi budget.
“Iraq is a close ally of Iran, and any deterioration in Iraq’s economy would also damage Iran’s economic interests in the country,” the official said.
In a separate arrangement, two tankers carrying Qatari LNG are heading to Pakistan after Islamabad reached an agreement with Tehran, according to two industry sources cited by Reuters.
The sources said neither Iraq nor Pakistan made direct payments to Iran or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the transits.
Industry sources said Tehran is formalizing control over the strait by asking Baghdad to submit documents for each tanker, including destination, shipping details, ownership, and cargo specifications.
A Pakistani source told Reuters that the process has not been smooth, saying, “The IRGC sometimes changes the goalposts, so it is hard to keep things on track, but we are working through it.”
Amid the chokehold of the US–Iran double blockade, maritime activity through the vital Strait of Hormuz has withered to a mere five percent of its normal capacity, staggering global economies and energy markets.
The blockade has pushed Pakistan to open six overland routes for Iran-bound cargo, giving Tehran an alternative land corridor as the US blockade disrupts maritime trade through the Gulf.
A military correspondent for The Cradle reported that Pakistan issued the “Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026” on 25 April, designating Karachi Port, Port Qasim, and Gwadar Deep-Sea Port to receive cargo bound for Iran and Central Asia through the Taftan border crossing.
The move could help clear around 3,000 Iranian containers stranded in Karachi after restrictions on ships traveling to and from Iran left food and consumer goods stuck at Pakistani ports.
Former Pakistani information minister Mushahid Hussain Syed said the new corridor gained importance after “the US Navy’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April,” but stressed that Islamabad sees the arrangement as a commercial decision rather than a direct escalation with Washington.
“The unfair blockade has left thousands of Iranian containers stuck at Karachi ports, which has made it harder for people in Iran to get consumer goods,” Syed told The Cradle.
China rejects Israel’s ‘groundless’ allegation of missile support for Iran
Press TV – May 12, 2026
China has rejected Israel’s claims that Beijing provided support to Iran in manufacturing missiles.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters on Tuesday that the accusations “are not grounded in facts.”
Beijing, he said, is “committed to promoting de-escalation and peace talks to bring about an end to the conflict” between Iran and the United States.
“We have made China’s position clear on multiple occasions. As a responsible major country, China always fulfills its due international obligations,” he added.
In an interview with CBS, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that during the joint US-Israeli aggression against Iran, China “gave a certain amount of support and particular components for missile manufacturing.”
Asked whether such support was continuing, he said, “Could be. Could be,” without providing further information.
Netanyahu’s controversial remarks came ahead of a planned visit to Beijing by US President Donald Trump.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman also condemned recent US sanctions on 12 individuals and entities over their alleged links to Iran, saying Beijing firmly opposes “unilateral sanctions.”
Guo said that the current “pressing priority” in West Asia is to “prevent, by all means, a relapse in fighting, rather than exploit the situation to throw mud at China.”
The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on 12 individuals and companies, several of them based in China and Hong Kong, for their alleged involvement in helping Iran “obtain weapons and the raw materials” necessary for its Shahed drones and ballistic missiles.
The department also threatened to take action against any foreign entities supporting what it called “illicit Iranian commerce,” including airlines, and to implement secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions that assist Iran, even those connected to China’s independent oil refineries.
China, however, pushed back against the sanctions on Chinese refiners buying Iranian crude, invoking a “blocking rule” for the first time last week, directing companies not to comply with US sanctions.
Why did Washington impose sanctions on China before the Trump-Xi summit?
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – May 12, 2026
New U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies just before Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing highlight the growing tendency to use economic pressure as a primary instrument of American diplomacy.
Donald Trump plans to visit China from May 13 to 15. His baggage includes a load of sanctions instead of concessions. Days before his visit to China, Washington imposed fresh sanctions on mainland Chinese and Hong Kong-linked firms accused of helping Iran procure drone and missile-related components. The message is unmistakable: the United States wants to negotiate from a position of pressure. But coercion before diplomacy often produces the opposite effect. Rather than strengthening Washington’s leverage over Beijing, the move risks hardening Chinese resistance, deepening China-Iran ties, and accelerating the erosion of America’s sanctions power in an increasingly multipolar world.
Coercion as Diplomacy
The timing tells the story. On May 8, the US Treasury announced sanctions on 10 individuals and companies — several based in China and Hong Kong — accused of facilitating Iran’s acquisition of materials used in Shahed drones and ballistic missile programmes. According to the Treasury Department, some firms allegedly supplied insulation materials and procurement services linked to Iran’s military-industrial network. Reuters reported that the sanctions came just days before Trump’s scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. And, just as Trump flew to China, the US imposed further sanctions on entities involved in shipping Iranian oil to China, hitting China’s energy demands.
The logic behind the move is relatively straightforward. Trump appears determined to avoid entering Beijing looking conciliatory or desperate for stabilization in US-China relations. He wants to completely dodge the impression that the US has lost in Iran. By imposing sanctions beforehand, Washington is signaling that dialogue with China will not come at the expense of American pressure campaigns against Iran or broader national security concerns. The sanctions also serve a domestic political purpose. Trump can portray himself as simultaneously engaging China diplomatically while remaining “tough” on both Beijing and Tehran.
This reflects a broader pattern in Trump-era diplomacy: negotiation through escalation. Whether on tariffs, NATO burden-sharing, or Iran, Trump has frequently relied on pressure tactics to create bargaining leverage before high-level meetings. The assumption is that economic coercion raises the costs of resistance and therefore increases the incentives for compromise. But this strategy works only if the other side believes accommodation is less costly than defiance. That assumption is becoming increasingly questionable in the case of China.
Beijing’s reaction was immediate and predictable. China’s Foreign Ministry condemned the sanctions as “illegal unilateral measures” and pledged to defend the legitimate interests of Chinese companies. Rather than creating diplomatic flexibility, the sanctions may have narrowed Xi Jinping’s room for maneuver by making concessions appear politically submissive.
This is an important point often overlooked in Washington. Chinese leaders do not interpret pre-summmit sanctions merely as tactical bargaining instruments; they typically view them as public demonstrations of coercion designed to humiliate China before negotiations even begin. In such circumstances, compromise becomes politically costly because it risks reinforcing perceptions of weakness both domestically and internationally. That dynamic is particularly significant today because US-China relations are no longer defined by strategic ambiguity or selective competition. They are increasingly viewed in both capitals as a systemic rivalry involving trade, technology, finance, security, and ideology simultaneously. In that environment, sanctions cease to look like isolated policy tools and instead become part of a broader containment strategy.
The Limits of Economic Pressure
The deeper problem for Washington is that sanctions may no longer carry the same coercive power they once supposedly did.
For decades, the United States relied on its dominance over the global financial system to compel compliance from adversaries and third parties alike. Access to the dollar system, Western banking networks, and US markets gave Washington enormous leverage. Secondary sanctions became, at least from Washington’s perspective, one of the most effective tools of American statecraft. But the geopolitical environment has changed significantly.
China today possesses far greater economic resilience than most previous sanctions targets. It also has stronger incentives to resist American pressure because compliance increasingly carries strategic costs of its own. Beijing sees Iran not merely as an isolated Middle Eastern partner but as part of a broader network of states capable of constraining US influence across multiple regions.
China remains Iran’s largest oil customer despite years of American sanctions. Under these conditions, China is unlikely to fully cooperate with Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Indeed, repeated sanctions may actually be accelerating China’s determination to build sanctions-resistant economic structures. Beijing has already expanded the use of alternative payment systems, encouraged yuan-denominated trade, and adopted legal mechanisms allowing Chinese firms to challenge or ignore certain foreign sanctions regimes. Each new round of American penalties reinforces the Chinese perception that dependence on US-controlled financial systems constitutes a strategic vulnerability.
There is also growing evidence that sanctions enforcement is producing diminishing returns. The United States has repeatedly sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong-linked firms accused of helping Iran procure drone components over the past several years. Yet the procurement networks continue adapting through shell companies, intermediaries, and rerouted supply chains.
A 2025 report in the South China Morning Post described the process as a “whack-a-mole exercise,” noting how Iranian procurement networks rapidly reorganized after earlier sanctions targeted Hong Kong-based front companies. The persistence of these networks suggests that sanctions may disrupt transactions temporarily without fundamentally changing the underlying strategic calculations of either China or Iran.
This matters because coercive tools derive much of their effectiveness from credibility. If the targeted state concludes that sanctions are manageable, adaptable, or largely symbolic, then the deterrent value of future sanctions declines substantially.
A More Fragmented Geopolitical Order
The sanctions also reveal a broader contradiction in contemporary American foreign policy. Washington increasingly wants two incompatible outcomes at the same time: strategic competition with China and selective cooperation with China. The Trump administration appears to believe that it can compartmentalize the relationship — sanctioning Chinese entities over Iran while simultaneously seeking Chinese cooperation on trade, regional stability, or maritime security. But the relationship has become too securitized for neat compartmentalization.
From Beijing’s perspective, sanctions on Chinese firms are not disconnected technical measures. They are part of a larger American strategy aimed at constraining China’s economic and geopolitical rise. Under those conditions, even limited cooperation with Washington becomes politically sensitive inside China.
Ironically, the sanctions may therefore deepen exactly the alignment Washington seeks to weaken. China, Iran, and Russia increasingly share a common interest in reducing exposure to US-led financial and strategic pressure. They do not constitute a formal alliance, but they are moving toward greater coordination because American coercive policies create shared incentives for resistance.
This does not mean sanctions are entirely ineffective. They can still raise transaction costs, complicate procurement networks, and signal political resolve. But the era in which sanctions alone could fundamentally reshape the behavior of major powers may be fading.
The more important question now is whether Washington is adapting quickly enough to that reality. If the United States continues relying on sanctions as its primary instrument of geopolitical leverage, it may unintentionally accelerate the fragmentation of the very international order that once made those sanctions so powerful.
Trump may arrive in Beijing believing he has strengthened his negotiating hand. Yet Xi Jinping is likely to interpret the sanctions differently: not as leverage for compromise, but as evidence that Washington increasingly views pressure itself as diplomacy, and that coercion is likely to remain a key feature of US ties with China. And when coercion becomes the default language of international politics, major powers rarely move toward accommodation. They prepare instead for a world in which confrontation is permanent.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is aresearch analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
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Iran submits response to latest US proposal for ending aggression
Press TV – May 10, 2026
Iran has submitted its official reply to the latest US proposal for reaching a deal that allows a permanent end to the US-Israeli war of aggression against the country.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said in a Sunday report that the country had submitted its reply to the US proposal to Pakistan, which has mediated efforts aimed at ending the war of aggression.
IRNA said the reply insists that current negotiations between Iran and the US should solely focus on efforts to end the war, and other issues, including disputes surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, should be discussed at later stages of the talks.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced earlier this week that the country would submit its final response to the US proposal after carrying out deliberations and thorough examinations.
The US proposal had come in response to a 14-article plan submitted by Iran to allow a complete halt to the US-Israeli war of aggression.
The latest Iranian reply is focused on efforts to end the aggression on all fronts, including Israeli attacks on Lebanon, and to guarantee the security of shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Iran and the US held an intensive day of negotiations on April 11–12 in Islamabad, four days after Pakistan mediated a ceasefire to halt the US-Israeli aggression on Iran that had started in late February.
The talks collapsed over US maximalist demands, Iranian officials said.
A key sticking point in the current negotiations between Iran and the US is the restoration of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway in the Persian Gulf, which has come under Iranian control since the early days of the aggression.
Iran has indicated it is ready to reopen the Strait if the aggression ends permanently and the US lifts its illegal sanctions and blockade on the country.
Authorities in Tehran have said that a first phase of efforts to reach a deal must concentrate on shipping and sanctions, while signaling they are ready to discuss the country’s nuclear program in later stages of the talks with the US.
Iran’s ‘threat’ to Western hegemony is not nuclear weapons
By Samuel Geddes | Al Mayadeen | May 9, 2026
US Secretary of State Rubio on Wednesday declared “Operation Epic Fury” concluded, the clearest indication so far that the US is writhing in the economic trap it sprung on itself. Being in a state of institutional paralysis, unable to accept the costs of ending the war while unable to tolerate its continuation, the Trump administration is attempting to find an equilibrium that allows hostilities to cease, while keeping as much as possible of its “maximum pressure” on Iran’s economy.
In precisely this vein, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in recent days has been unable to conceal his glee at the economic privation imposed on the Iranian people by his policies, attributing both the Riyal’s late 2025 collapse and the impending effects of the naval blockade on its oil production to “[Operation] Economic Fury.”
Since the inception of the Islamic Republic 47 years ago, the United States has weaponized its dominance in the global economy to impose one of the most comprehensive sanctions regimes ever implemented.
With each successive layer of economic siege deployed against the Iranians, US administrations and their surrogate regimes across the collective west, along with their propagandists in the media, painted this undeclared war as solely targeting “the regime.” The Iranian people themselves, they would have us believe, were never the intended targets.
This was, of course, only ever a rhetorical sleight of hand. The sanctions were “targeted” at the “regime” only in the sense that they were intended to make everyday life so unbearable that the Iranian public would blame their own leadership and overthrow it. The exact reason why they would primarily blame their own government, rather than Washington, London, Berlin and so-on, has never been rationalized. It is simply the economic strangulation of Gaza and Cuba that has been scaled up to the macro-level. Collective punishment of the entire population is the point, either to induce domestic rebellion, or to discipline them for not carrying out Western policy goals.
With the restarting of active war from February 28, Washington has reverted to implementing this strategy by its most direct means. Instead of choking off medicines to the health system, it simply bombed the health system itself, from critical national hospitals to the Pasteur Institute that produced domestic vaccines against the Covid pandemic. Instead of blacklisting Iranian students from foreign institutions, it bombs the Iranian universities that have been the engines of the nation’s indigenous industries, civilian, industrial and military since the siege began in 1980. Beyond merely sanctioning Iran’s industrial output, it is now robbing it of its revenues by attacking the steel plants of Isfahan and Ahvaz and the Asalouyeh petrochemical complexes.
The logical framing of these targets is that they are aimed at degrading Iran’s capacity to manufacture missiles, drones and its still non-existent nuclear weapons. By this reasoning, literally every economic sector, every potential source of revenue for the Iranian state is a target. It lays bare the true motivation not only behind the current war, but also behind the entire campaign of economic, political, and diplomatic coercion that the West has thrown at the country since its Revolution. It is not simply that Iranian nuclear program is unacceptable to Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and Tel Aviv, it is mainly the existence of an Iranian steel industry, pharmaceutical sector, ship-building capacity and space program. The very existence of an entrenched, self-sufficient and technologically progressing economy outside of the Western-dominated world system constitutes, by its nature, a systemic threat that cannot be tolerated. It must either be economically absorbed and dismantled from within or militarily destroyed.
It is a fear of the vastly enhanced economic and technological weight of an Iran unburdened by secondary sanctions, reaping tens of billions of dollars in taxes on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and fundamentally restructuring the security and economic architecture of the Gulf, that explains the Trump administration’s unwillingness to end the state of war, even as it pushes the global economy deeper into existential crisis every day.
Tehran’s incentive, and its ability to demand, maximal concessions to accept an end to war however will not decline over time, it will increase inversely to the US tolerance for economic pain. Thus, Washington is at some point going to make at least one existentially humiliating concession to extricate itself from the crisis it created. It might agree to suspend all secondary sanctions against the Islamic Republic, or accept Tehran’s demonstrated capacity to tax traffic through Hormuz or permanently evacuate its bases in the region. It might even do all of these.
The blockade might plausibly remain as a face-saving fiction- the US navy clearly dares not intercept Iranian shipments heading to China. Over time, alternate land and sea corridors will compensate for the disruption to Iranian shipping.
When Washington eventually does cave it will have achieved the exact opposite of its intentions in launching its aggression: a vastly more economically empowered Islamic Republic with the throat of the world economy in its hand.
Trump’s choices are limited to accepting a far more economically powerful Iran now or accepting it later after a catastrophic resumption of hostilities. Maybe then, he will have learned precisely why none of his predecessors acted as he has.
Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
Al Mayadeen | May 2, 2026
Senior Iranian lawmakers have unveiled a proposed plan to regulate maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, introducing new restrictions on certain vessels and a licensing system that would require ships to obtain authorization from Tehran.
Ali Nikzad, Deputy Speaker of Iran’s parliament, detailed that the initiative includes a 12-point framework aimed at managing transit through one of the world’s most critical oil shipping routes. Under the proposal, vessels linked to “Israel” would be barred from passing through the Strait at all times, while ships from “hostile countries” would be denied transit unless they pay unspecified war reparations.
Nikzad added that all other vessels would be required to operate under a newly established legal framework, obtaining official licenses and authorization from Iranian authorities before entering the waterway. He emphasized that the plan would be implemented “in accordance with international law” and with consideration for the rights of neighboring states, while asserting that Iran would not relinquish what it views as its sovereign rights.
The deputy speaker described the proposed administration of the Strait as comparable in significance to Iran’s historic oil nationalization efforts, signaling the strategic importance Tehran places on the initiative.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz seen as public demand in Iran
Further details were provided by Mohammad Reza Rezaei, head of the Iranian Parliament’s Reconstruction Committee, who outlined how revenues generated under the plan would be allocated. He said that 30% of fees collected from passing vessels would be directed toward strengthening military infrastructure, while the remaining 70% would fund economic development projects and public welfare initiatives.
Rezaei also emphasized the political framing of the proposal, stating that managing the Strait of Hormuz is “more important than obtaining nuclear weapons” and describing control over the waterway as a demand of the Iranian public. He reiterated that Iran would not forgo its right to administer and oversee the Strait.
“Exercising control and administration over the Strait of Hormuz is a demand of the Iranian people, and Iran will not relinquish this right,” he stressed.
War escalation and regional impact
Against the backdrop of escalating regional tensions, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has escalated following a US-Israeli aggression on Iran, triggering a forceful Iranian response.
The United States has intensified its military and maritime aggression through sanctions enforcement, ship seizures, and a broader blockade targeting Iranian ports and vessels, moves widely viewed by Tehran as unlawful and destabilizing.
In response, Iran has exercised its geographic leverage over the strait to control the maritime traffic, prioritizing vessels not linked to the hostile aggression. The standoff has disrupted one of the world’s most critical energy corridors, through which roughly a fifth of global oil and gas supplies pass, fueling volatility in global markets while limited shipping continues under heightened restrictions.
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British weapons and personnel doing much of the killing in Yemen
Press TV – June 18, 2019
A detailed report published by the Guardian newspaper has shown how Britain is massively contributing to Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen as it suggests that London is not only supplying the bombs that fall on Yemenis, but it provides the personnel and expertise that keep the war going.
The comprehensive report by Arron Merat published on Tuesday showed that Britain was doing much of the killing in Yemen as the country continues to provide Saudi Arabia with everything it needs to turn its southern impoverished neighbor into a graveyard.
“Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors,” said Merat in the report. … continue
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