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My thought is, China is seen as needing to be curtailed.

Syria curtailed Russia, as you said, they lost the capacity to support it. Iran was a show of force, and something that could be done. And, Iran was very much supporting Russia -- lots of support, such as Iranian drone tech.

But from the China perspective, China was buying a lot of oil from Iran. That was cut off. And I imagine Venezuela as well, has been selling a lot of sanctioned oil to China too.

China has no domestic oil supply of note, and needs to import a LOT of oil. This could be a message to both Russia and China.