Iran’s deep trade ties with Beijing and Moscow could prove difficult for the US to disrupt, say analysts.
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to financially punish any country providing an economic “lifeline” to Iran, as he declared an “economic D-Day” against Tehran.
The threat, six months into the US’s costly conflict with Iran, is Trump’s latest attempt to wield US economic power to achieve his foreign policy objectives, after a series of damaging trade wars earlier in his second term in office.
But Trump’s leverage over China and Russia, two important trade partners with Iran, is limited, analysts say. Russia is already under sweeping US sanctions and operates largely outside the US-led economic framework. China, meanwhile, has repeatedly shown it is willing to ignore US sanctions when doing so serves its own economic interests.
Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that “it is going to be very difficult” for Trump to pull off his pressure campaign effectively.
“Trump is trying to unilaterally assert the kind of coordinated sanctions that traditionally has taken multilateral coordination, and that means getting on board China, Russia, the P5 of the UN Security Council,” Musgrave said, referring to the five permanent members of the UNSC.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, the US president said his campaign against Iran would be “the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country”.
In addition, he said there would be “tremendous economic consequences” for countries that help Iran subvert US sanctions, citing methods such as “oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries [and] front companies”.
Earlier the same day, the United Arab Emirates, which Iran has long relied on for critical imports and access to commercial markets, announced an indefinite trade embargo on Tehran, after accusing Iran’s military of launching two ballistic missiles at its territory.
Nader Habibi, a Middle East economics professor at Brandeis University, said he believed the US “strongly encouraged or induced” the UAE to impose the trade embargo, and that the US may also seek to pressure other Iranian trade partners, including its biggest one, China.
Any US plan to disrupt China-Iran trade is likely to face significant hurdles.
While China bought 80 percent of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025, according to data from analytics firm Kpler, going after China’s oil refineries is often challenging because most are independent with little reliance on the US financial system.
And while sanctioning the major Chinese banks if they process Iranian funds, as the US Treasury has threatened, would sting, it could also push China to hit back during a sensitive diplomatic period.
Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank’s China, Asia Pacific Programme, said Trump’s threat to target Iran’s economic allies “won’t alter China’s involvement and the existing trading relationship with Iran”.
“Trump intends to stabilise the ties with China, so as Beijing aims to have temporary truce with Washington,” Yu told Al Jazeera.