Trade & War
The same countries that periodically surface as “victims” of energy shortages are often deeply embedded in the very systems that distort those markets. Not just passive but actively.
They transship.
They arbitrage.
They reroute flows that are supposed to be restricted.
Oil doesn’t just move from point A to point B anymore.
It moves through layers reflagged shipments, intermediary ports, opaque logistics chains. Sanctioned barrels become “blended,” origin becomes ambiguous, and enforcement becomes optional.
At the same time, those same actors are often buying Middle Eastern oil at a discount leveraging geopolitical friction for economic gain. Cheap inputs, hidden channels, and plausible deniability.
And it doesn’t stop at energy.
The supply chain extends upstream into the components that actually matter—industrial inputs, dual-use chemicals, and materials that quietly feed into military capacity.
While one side publicly constrains, another side replenishes.
The Telegraph tracked 5 shipments of sodium perchlorate, the key ingredient for solid missile fuel, sailing from China to Iran since the war began.
The ships turned off their trackers for large parts of the journey. At least 2 lied about their destination.
All 5 are owned by Iran’s sanctioned shipping lines.
These 5 shipments could contain enough material to produce around 785 ballistic missiles.
Tariffs were never just about protectionism.
At their core, they were a blunt attempt to counter something more complex: a system where enforcement lags behavior, and where incentives reward those willing to operate in the gray.
If anything, the mistake wasn’t that tariffs were used.