Iran turned off cameras belonging to a UN nuclear watchdog in one of its uranium enrichment facilities



The Iranian government was exposed for turning off two surveillance cameras of a United Nations nuclear watchdog program that was monitoring one of the country’s atomic development sites.

The Independent reported that the development initially broke on Iranian state television. The report did not identify at which of the nuclear development sites the infraction occurred, but it did indicate that the interference was a likely a part of a new pressure technique being pushed by the Iranian government as it seeks to muscle its way out of an imminent censure from Western nations at an upcoming meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Iranian state television report described the two disabled cameras as monitoring “OLEM enrichment levels and flowmeters.” This refers to the IAEA’s Online Enrichment Monitors, which watch the enrichment of uranium gas through piping at enrichment facilities.

Reportedly, the Iranian government is enriching uranium gas at both its Fordo and Natanz underground nuclear sites.

In 2015, the Iranian government and various world powers agreed to a nuclear deal that would allow the Iranian leadership to drastically restrict the amount of uranium it could enrich in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the arrangement, subsequently raising tensions in various parts of the Middle East.

In the time since Trump’s withdrawal from the arrangement, Iran has broken every limit imposed on it by the 2015 deal and now enriches uranium at a 60% purity — weapons-grade enrichment is 90%. Despite the Iranian government’s disregard for the restrictions placed upon it, the IAEA has been allowed to continually visit the country’s enrichment facilities.

The Vienna-based IAEA did not immediately acknowledge the Iranian regime’s disabling of the surveillance cameras.

This past February, a senior official in the U.S. State Department said that Iran was “weeks, not months” away from being able to power an atomic.

The statement came after a series of indirect discussions with Iran and other world powers in Vienna.

After over a year of negotiations, the State Department confirmed that diplomatic talks with Iran and other nations about the future of the country’s nuclear capabilities would come to an end whether Iran accepts the deal offered to it by U.S. officials or not.

At the time, the Biden administration believed that Iran’s nuclear program had become so advanced that there would be no benefit to proposing a return to the 2015 arrangement that restricted Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities while gradually lifting economic sanctions on the country.

China is helping Iran avoid sanctions through a multibillion-dollar oil-buying scheme



Several Chinese companies are helping Iran avoid sanctions by importing illicit Iranian crude oil.

A network of Chinese petrochemical refiners provided the Iranian regime with at least $22 billion in revenue since President Joe Biden took office, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

According to information obtained by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), Chinese oil refiners known as teapots, which are semi-independent entities that are not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, are largely responsible for “funding this illicit and uniquely lucrative trade” with Iran. UANI is an advocacy group that is dedicated to exposing the people and entities responsible for helping Iran evade economic sanctions.

China’s use of teapots is a part of a coordinated effort to evade internationally supported sanctions on Iranian oil. Through this network, the Chinese government has been able to purchase Iranian crude oil well below the market price while keeping the oil’s point of origin under wraps.

By using teapots, China is able to protect its corporate, state-owned oil firms from sanctions.

The teapot network allows China to bypass the use of its state-controlled refineries and misrepresent the purchases as originating from countries other than Iran.

This scheme has allowed China to import at least $22 billion in Iranian crude oil since Biden entered office and relaxed sanctions on the Iranian regime as part of his administration’s strategy to secure favorable conditions with Iran as it moved to reinitiate its nuclear development program.

Before Biden took office, China was importing an average of 400,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran. After Biden become president, China has, on average, imported around 1,000,000 barrels per day, according to data gathered by UANI.

Documents obtained by UANI indicate that “the bulk of Iranian oil is indeed being imported by the teapots.” Records analyzed by UANI show at least 40 different shipments of Iranian oil to China dating back to 2019.

In a policy brief that outlined China’s teapot scheme, UANI said, “The fact that teapots — rather than major state actors — would import the bulk of Iranian oil makes sense from China's perspective. Since the U.S. has in fact sanctioned Chinese state-owned imports in the past, such as Zhuhai Zhenrong, the decision to import Iranian oil via dozens of small unaffiliated ‘non-state' firms helps obscure the Chinese government's role and protect its own big firms from scrutiny, accountability, and attendant sanctions."

The group said, “With their small size and limited business operations, teapots are both are to uncover and not exposed to the U.S. financial system.”