Bloomberg Surveillance · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Experts suggest the US is reluctant to sanction major Chinese financial institutions involved in purchasing Iranian oil, fearing the disruption to the global economy. While new sanctions authority exists, the US has historically avoided targeting significant Chinese entities, with China being Iran's largest oil trading partner.
“The question is, will the U.S. move forward? And go at, let's say, a Chinese financial institution, the conduit for China's purchase of Iranian oil, which they purchased roughly 80% of Iran's oil on the market.”
“I mean, what you do is you sanction a Chinese financial institution, not one of the state-owned banks and not one that's large enough that's systemically important in China, basically a bank that someone's heard of that's not significant enough to hurt the global economy.”
“And his response is, well, I don't want to, why would I blow up the global economy?”