Trump’s Venezuela oil seizure drives China toward Iranian crude, blunting US sanctions pressure & giving Iran an unexpected payday! Right, so Donald Trump invaded Venezuela, took control of the oil, largely seen as the only reason he did it, and by doing so shipments of Venezuelan oil to China have dropped. No surprises there, but China is still going to want oil from somewhere and in news that shouldn’t be much of a surprise either, Chinese refiners have responded to all of this by buying more Iranian crude instead. It’s cheaper, it’s already stored, it’s already available. You didn’t think yet more sanctions would actually stop any of that did you? The barrels that were meant to disappear from the Chinese horizon have simply changed flags and routes, which also removes the assumption that sanctions automatically squeeze the target and it leaves Washington and the day-glo orange oaf supposedly in charge unable to control where the money actually goes. Oil is still flowing, Iran is still selling and now selling even more, China is still buying, and the confidence that pressure equals compliance no longer holds where we were all told it very much does. This doesn’t stop at Venezuela or Iran, because once buyers learn they can substitute sanctioned oil without paying a strategic price, as has been the case for years, Iran long ago found ways and means around decades of sanctions, the whole enforcement story weakens all the more. The people who sounded most certain about leverage now have to explain why the outcome ran the other way, why disruption in Venezuela has now given Iran, the supposed target of the next big US military push a big fat economic boost, and why a system built on threat consistently fails as it does. Right, so Donald Trump has pushed a set of moves around Venezuelan oil that have tightened supply to China, and the immediate practical result has been Chinese independent refiners leaning harder into discounted Iranian crude that is already sitting in bonded storage in China and on ships, because it is there, it is cheap, and it is politically easier for Beijing to tolerate than being told by Washington what it can and cannot buy. That is the part that matters, not the macho talk, not the press-conference posturing, not the vague threats about “pressure” that never quite land anywhere real. Oil is still moving, money is still changing hands, and the buyer that counts is still buying.