Iran war live: US vows toughest Iran sanctions, urges China support

US President Donald Trump has threatened severe economic consequences for countries that continue doing business with Iran, including China, which was the biggest buyer of Iranian crude oil last year, according to Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.“If the Trump administration wanted to impose additional sanctions on Chinese entities for handling Iranian oil, it really comes back to a calculation: how the Trump administration weighs the benefits of sanctioning those Chinese entities versus the costs involved,” Downs told Al Jazeera, noting China has the ability to hit back, including by restricting exports of rare earth elements.She said China’s Iranian oil imports appear to have fallen somewhat, though this is difficult to confirm because those barrels seem to be recorded in Chinese customs data as imports from other countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia.China continued importing Iranian crude even after joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, she said, only slowing after the US imposed a naval blockade on Iran in mid-April. Downs said Iranian barrels remain in the water outside the Strait of Hormuz that could still be supplied to China.“I don’t see right now China reducing its imports of Iranian oil down to zero,” she said, “in part because, if we look at all the different entities involved in getting oil from Iran to China, every time there is a new sanction announced, they tend to find a workaround.”