Iran Sanctions on Chinese

Two Chinese individuals and the companies they represent are on the sanctions list imposed on Iran this past week.  Both are in the business of import-export which covers everything they can get their hands on.  US News has an article on it, indicating it might be an opening salvo against some of the cooperation Iran gets from other countries.  Were that the case the opening salvo was in 2015 and 2016 when the U.S put sanctions on two of China's largest telecommunications companies when were selling banned items to Iran and using bogus companies to do it.  The U.S. Commerce Department was bold enough to publish internal documents that indicated how to structure these companies to beat restrictions on U.S. Export laws.

In the current case, it was interesting to hear their pleas of innocence, saying they were just importing "normal goods" which seems odd since the goods the U.S was looking at were related to the production or refinement of nuclear weapons and missile technology.  Maybe they normally export these kinds of things.