In an article published by the Chinese daily, Global Times, Charles Gray said Washington’s “decision against granting China an exemption from the US sanctions that are set to be put in place against importers of Iranian oil ... [is] nothing less than insane.”
“These sanctions, authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year 2012, are targeted at nations that continue to import Iranian oil and have not satisfied the US government that they have taken steps to reduce their importation of that oil,” he added.
The analyst noted that US demand on other countries to stop importing Iran’s oil or face US penalties is “offensive to many nations” because the NDAA “essentially extends US sovereignty to every nation named in it.”
“It is unlikely that the Chinese government wants to be seen as surrendering to these US demands. Such an action would certainly infuriate Chinese public opinion in the short term, and make further diplomatic work with the US more difficult in the long term,” he added.
Gray stated that the US law has been essentially designed to tell Beijing “that it will be the US not China that will determine when and how Chinese financial institutions may spend their currency.”
Otherwise, he added, countries ignoring the US sanctions against Tehran will have to suffer the consequences.
“Besides, the financial consequences of any sanctions [against Beijing] would be devastating for both the US and China. At the very least, it would lead to drastically increased uncertainty in the financial markets. This would be especially true given the probability that China would retaliate against US financial institutions,” he said.
The analyst added that the most extreme result of the US sanctions against Beijing is a general breakdown of commerce between the two nations which may even plunge the whole world into recession or even full-scale depression.
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