In the cat-and-mouse game of US naval blockades and oil sanctions, small, fleet-footed independent refineries in China may be gifting Washington the economic leverage over Tehran that it has been struggling to achieve. It is not that China’s so-called teapot refineries are taking sides. Rather, it is pragmatic economic self-interest that is increasingly pushing the Chinese to replace sanctioned Iranian crude oil with supplies from Iraq and Qatar. Citing three major oil-trading houses, Reuters on
