[dylan604]

Iran was quite happy to let Chinese and Russian flagged ships to pass. Now, the US is blocking those as well as anything heading toward Iran. The US recently had a short lived Operation Dumb Name to have the US Navy escort ships out of the straight. It lasted less than 48 hours.

[Ajedi32]

I stand corrected then. Blocking "anything heading toward Iran" is perfectly reasonable given they're at war, and blocking Russian ships makes sense given the separate ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but I don't really see the point in the US blocking Chinese ships going to countries that aren't Iran, unless there's credible evidence China is giving direct aid to Iran. Is there? Otherwise, allowing them through seems like a pretty easy way to fix the oil shortage without much downside, at least until Iran starts blocking them again.

[dylan604]

China is buying the oil. They don't care about US Sanctions. Not really sure what you mean by easy way to fix the shortage. Twenty percent of the world's oil trade is no longer trading because the straight is closed. The US is playing a game of "if we can't have any, nobody can have any".

[Ajedi32]

China can't buy oil from Iran that they physically can't get (due to the US blockade). If they want to buy oil from other non-Iranian nations though I say let them! Oil is a global market; every barrel China buys from that section of the Middle East is a barrel they're not buying somewhere else, driving up the price. We could even let them re-flag a bunch of oil tankers under the banner of China and restart global oil trade to the Persian Gulf tomorrow. China would benefit from that of course, but unless they decide to invade Taiwan tomorrow or something I don't see a problem with that. Not like it helps Iran at all (again, this is all provided China isn't somehow aiding them in the war, otherwise the US blocking their ships seems justifiable to me).

Meanwhile, every other nation in the world with a navy should be putting pressure on Iran to stop blocking their ships.