Max Meizlish, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former US Treasury official focused on sanctions enforcement, said China may be the real pressure point against Iran as it buys most of Tehran’s oil, helps it evade sanctions and provides the economic oxygen keeping the Islamic Republic alive.
“There’s really no more important enabler of Iranian malign influence and Iranian sanctions evasion than China,” Meizlish told this week’s episode of Eye for Iran.
China buys roughly 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports — a revenue Meizlish says directly finances the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran’s ballistic missile programs and its regional proxy network.
“Chinese purchases of that oil are directly supporting the IRGC, the hardline elements of the Iranian regime,” he said. “All of that is funded and backed by China.”
His comments come as tensions rise over Iran’s efforts to exert greater control over the Strait of Hormuz, including reports that Tehran is exploring formalized transit systems and toll mechanisms for ships crossing one of the world’s most critical waterways.
But while global attention remains focused on Iran’s actions in the Persian Gulf, Meizlish argues Washington’s most effective pressure point may lie elsewhere: the financial networks helping Tehran survive economically.
One of the most significant, he says, is Hong Kong.
“If the United States really wanted to, it could bring a lot of pressure there by threatening to cut off all dollar access to Hong Kong as an entire jurisdiction,” Meizlish said.
He pointed specifically to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, a rarely used mechanism allowing Washington to effectively sever foreign banks from the dollar system by restricting correspondent banking access.
“When we think about Chinese sanctions evasion benefiting Iran, a lot of that money goes through Hong Kong,” he said. “Hong Kong is a global financial hub, and it relies on access to dollars to do that.”
Despite years of “maximum pressure” rhetoric from Washington, Meizlish argues the United States has yet to fully use the economic tools available to it.
“For all the talk of maximum pressure, maximum pressure has been a really effective bumper sticker,” he said. “We need to move from the period of bumper stickers into the period of behavior change.”
The hesitation, he argues, stems largely from fears of Chinese retaliation.
Beijing dominates the mining and processing of rare earth minerals critical to global manufacturing, electronics and defense industries. China could also retaliate against Western firms operating in the country or invoke anti-sanctions laws designed to punish compliance with US restrictions.
“There are a lot of steps that the Chinese could take,” Meizlish warned.
Still, he argues China may be more economically vulnerable than many policymakers assume.
“China’s banking sector is quite fractured. It’s quite vulnerable to economic coercion,” he said, pointing to bad debt, youth unemployment and the country’s prolonged housing crisis.
Meizlish also cited signs Beijing fears the consequences of secondary sanctions. After the United States sanctioned a Chinese “teapot refinery,” he noted, Chinese regulators reportedly warned banks not to extend loans to such firms over concerns they too could become targets.
“To me, all of that supports the idea that the US actually could bring a lot more pressure to bear right now because China is uniquely vulnerable to economic coercion,” he said.
For Meizlish, the broader question is whether Washington is prepared to absorb the economic costs of confronting Beijing more aggressively in order to weaken Tehran.
“We’re in the middle of potentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fully degrade the Iranian regime’s capacity to exert influence in the region,” he said.
But achieving that, he argues, would require moving beyond symbolic pressure campaigns toward far more aggressive financial enforcement targeting China itself.
“There’s no more important country to tackle than China,” he said. “And there are all these unique economic vulnerabilities that we should be taking advantage of.”
