Trump, Netanyahu agree to step up pressure on Iranian oil sales to China

The transfers involved at least six Iranian diplomats who carried suitcases filled with US dollars on commercial flights to Lebanon, according to the information.

The cash deliveries formed part of efforts to help Hezbollah rebuild its finances and operational capacity after sustaining significant blows to its leadership, weapons stockpiles and funding networks.

Those involved include Mohammad Ebrahim Taherianfard, a former ambassador to Turkey and senior Foreign Ministry official; Mohammad Reza Shirkhodaei, a veteran diplomat and former consul general in Pakistan; his brother Hamidreza Shirkhodaei; Reza Nedaei; Abbas Asgari; and Amir-Hamzeh Shiranirad, a former Iranian embassy employee in Canada.

Taherianfard traveled to Beirut in January alongside Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. He carried a suitcase filled with dollars, relying on diplomatic immunity to avoid airport inspection.

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Similar methods were used on other trips, with diplomats transporting cash directly through Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, also traveled to Beirut in October and carried hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, according to the information.

After Israeli strikes disrupted weapons and cash-smuggling routes used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria, Beirut airport emerged as a primary channel for direct cash deliveries.

Hezbollah’s longstanding influence over security structures at the airport has in the past facilitated such transfers, though Lebanese authorities have recently increased control.

The cash shipments come as Hezbollah faces acute financial strain. The group has struggled to pay fighters and to finance reconstruction in parts of southern Lebanon heavily damaged in fighting. Rebuilding costs have been estimated in the billions of dollars.

In January 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had accused Iran of funneling tens of millions of dollars in cash to Hezbollah through Beirut airport, with Iranian diplomats and other couriers allegedly carrying suitcases stuffed with US dollars to help the group recover after major losses.

Israel filed complaints with the US-led cease-fire oversight committee, while Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah denied wrongdoing. The report said tighter scrutiny at Beirut airport and the disruption of routes through Syria had made such cash shipments a more prominent channel for funding.

On Tuesday, the US Treasury announced new sanctions targeting what it described as key mechanisms Hezbollah uses to sustain its finances, including coordination with Iran and exploitation of Lebanon’s informal cash economy.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Lebanese gold exchange company Jood SARL, which operates under the supervision of US-designated Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a Hezbollah-linked financial institution. Treasury said Jood converts Hezbollah’s gold reserves into usable funds and helps the group mitigate liquidity pressures.

OFAC also sanctioned an international procurement and commodities shipping network involving Hezbollah financiers operating from multiple jurisdictions, including Iran.

“Hezbollah is a threat to peace and stability in the Middle East,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement, adding that the United States would continue working to cut the group off from the global financial system.

Iran has long considered Hezbollah a central pillar of its regional alliance network and has provided the group with financial, military and logistical support for decades.

In an op-ed published this week in one of Iran’s leading economic newspapers, Donya-ye Eghtesad, the economist Massoud Nili described the country’s current predicament as a failure of governance that left mounting problems and public grievances unaddressed.

“The current situation marks one of the saddest and most critical junctures in Iran’s history,” Nili wrote, “a moment in which thousands of Iranians — mainly young people — lost their lives in less than 48 hours.”

He argued that “a combination of poverty, unemployment, inequality, inflation, psychological insecurity under the looming shadow of war, and cultural conflict placed young Iranians at the center of the crisis.”

The unrest began in Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar in late 2025, initially driven by slogans reflecting economic hardship. Over the following week, they broadened into nationwide demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Protests peaked on January 8 and 9, following a call for coordinated actions by exiled prince Reza Pahlavi.

As many as 36,500 people were killed during the crackdown on those two days, according to an internal assessment leaked to and reviewed by Iran International.

Among the clearest warning signs, Nili noted, was the existence of nearly 12 million young Iranians who are neither employed nor enrolled in education.

Iran’s labor market, he wrote, has been effectively stagnant since 2009. While the working-age population increased by 4.4 million, the economy created only about 200,000 jobs, even as roughly 700,000 people lost employment.

Official figures suggest that net job creation has approached zero in recent years.

Other economists have echoed Nili’s assessment in the weeks since the protests and their violent suppression.

Speaking at Tejarat Farda’s economic forum in late January, Mohammad Mehdi Behkish described the protests as the product of “forty years of flawed governance and policymaking,” arguing that rigid political and economic structures had pushed society toward a breaking point.

Another prominent economist, Mousa Ghaninejad, pointed to the scale of the deterioration. In 2011, he said, fewer than 20 percent of Iranians lived below the poverty line. Today, that figure has risen to roughly 40 percent.

Declining oil revenues have further constrained the state’s ability to provide social support, while access to adequate nutrition and medical care has sharply declined.

Official data show inflation has exceeded 40 percent for at least two years, eroding purchasing power even among government employees and military personnel.

High inflation has enriched groups with preferential access to state-linked resources, widening inequality and deepening social resentment.

Nili concluded that a convergence of poverty, unemployment, inequality, psychological insecurity under the shadow of war, and cultural conflict had placed young Iranians at the center of the crisis.

Writing from inside Iran, Nili confined his analysis to economic and social indicators and avoided the political roots of the crisis—the deepening rupture between the state and a society that has come to resent the worldview and governing vision of its rulers.

He did mention “realities”, however, that if ignored, would steer the country toward “an extremely dangerous future.”

In a statement posted on social media, the Indian Coast Guard said it intercepted three vessels about 100 nautical miles west of Mumbai on Friday after what it called “tech-enabled surveillance and data-pattern analysis.”

“The syndicate exploited mid-sea transfers in international waters to move cheap oil from conflict-ridden regions to motor tankers, evading duties owed to coastal states,” the coast guard said.

It added that sustained inspections, electronic data checks and crew questioning had revealed the network’s methods and links to what it described as a “global handler network,” and said the vessels were being escorted to Mumbai for further legal action.

The coast guard statement did not mention Iran, the ownership of the vessels, or any sanctions violations.

However, tanker tracking firm TankerTrackers said it had identified the three vessels as AL JAFZIA, ASPHALT STAR and STELLAR RUBY, adding that the ships were under US sanctions. TankerTrackers said STELLAR RUBY was operating under the Iranian flag.

Iranian media separately reported that the three seized tankers were linked to Iran and were detained for alleged oil smuggling, saying the vessels had been sanctioned by the United States in 2025.

The Indian Coast Guard said the vessels were known for frequently changing their identities and said the operation proved India’s role as “a net provider of maritime security and guardian of the rules-based international order.”

Washington has accused Iran of using a so-called shadow fleet of tankers to evade US oil sanctions.

Neither Indian authorities nor Iranian officials have publicly commented on the reports linking the seized vessels to Iran.

For now, the threat is muted as Iran and the United States have returned to the negotiating table. But the shadow of war has not lifted.

Hardline and influential voices in both capitals continue to push a confrontational line, and the presence of the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln near Iranian waters is a reminder of how quickly tensions could escalate.

Earlier this week, units from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps approached and boarded a commercial vessel flying a US flag in the strait, while a US F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that had approached the carrier strike group.

On the same day, amid a diplomatic scramble across the region to keep talks alive, hardline lawmakers in Tehran publicly revived calls to close the strait.

Yet the economic constraints on any serious disruption are severe.

The China factor

According to data from commodities intelligence provider Kpler seen by Iran International, nearly 95 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports in 2025 were loaded at Kharg Island and shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, primarily to China.

Estimates from the US Energy Information Administration show that roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products—about one-fifth of global consumption—pass through the strait each day.

Only about 6 percent of that volume is destined for Europe and the United States. Asian buyers dominate, absorbing 84 percent of oil and petroleum products transiting Hormuz, as well as more than 80 percent of liquefied natural gas shipments.

China alone imports around 5 million barrels of oil per day via the route. Any sustained disruption would therefore strike directly at Beijing’s energy security.

That vulnerability has grown in recent months as Venezuelan oil exports to China have effectively halted following stepped-up US enforcement. Venezuela exported about 850,000 barrels per day in January—volumes sufficient to replace most of the oil consumed in Europe and the United States that transits Hormuz.

Reuters reported that the United States last month reclaimed its position as the largest individual destination for Venezuelan crude, receiving about 284,000 barrels per day.

China, by contrast, has stepped back. PetroChina recently halted purchases of Venezuelan crude, signaling that Beijing no longer expects access to discounted supplies once available under sanctions-era arrangements.

A narrowing margin

With sanctions also complicating imports from Russia and Iran, China’s reliance on Persian Gulf oil—and on uninterrupted traffic through Hormuz—is set to deepen further.

From a Western perspective, these shifts have quietly altered the risk calculus. While any disruption in Hormuz would still push global oil prices higher, Europe and the United States are now better positioned than in the past to absorb short-term shocks. China is not.

For Iran, the costs would be higher still. Roughly 80 percent of its foreign trade, oil and non-oil alike, moves through ports along the Persian Gulf. Closing Hormuz would not only jeopardize China’s energy supplies but effectively paralyze Iran’s own external commerce.

There is also a broader cushion in the system. The International Energy Agency estimates that global spare production capacity will remain near 4 million barrels per day through 2026, helping to limit the impact of any temporary disruption.

All of this helps explain why Iran’s recurring threats to close the Strait of Hormuz—raised repeatedly over more than two decades—have never been carried out.

The motion said senators noted “with grave concern” reports of indiscriminate killings of civilians, the targeting of women and children, mass arrests and internet and communications blackouts. It also acknowledged the distress felt by Iranian-Australians unable to contact relatives in Iran.

It called on the Albanese government to keep working with international partners, including the United Nations, to support independent investigations into human rights violations in Iran, press for accountability, expand targeted sanctions and push for an end to violence, executions and communications restrictions.

Labor Senator Raff Ciccone, one of the co-sponsors, said in a post on X that the Senate had condemned “the Iranian regime’s brutal repression of peaceful protesters” and reaffirmed Australia’s solidarity with the Iranian people and the Iranian-Australian community.

His comments followed earlier action this week, when Australia imposed new sanctions on 20 individuals and three entities linked to Iran’s security apparatus over the protest crackdown.

Speaking in the Senate earlier this week, Ciccone said he supported the government’s steps and voiced solidarity with Iranians protesting inside the country.

“Since 28 December last year, the Iranian regime has responded to peaceful protests with extraordinary and horrifying violence against its own people,” he told parliament.

He said authorities had tried to hide the scale of the crackdown. “The regime has attempted to conceal the scale of its brutality through nationwide internet and telecommunication blackouts,” he said.

Referring to the new sanctions, Ciccone said they targeted those responsible for repression, including figures linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “These sanctions are not symbolic; they are targeted, deliberate and designed to impose real consequences on those responsible for repression and violence,” he said.

Ciccone also highlighted the impact on Iranians living in Australia. “Members of the Australian Iranian community have watched these events unfold with profound anguish,” he said, adding that many had relatives at risk.

“Australia’s message is clear: the use of violence against civilians, the silencing of dissent and the systemic denial of human rights will not be met with indifference,” he said.