Hello and welcome to another episode of Realpolitik. I am your host, Firas Mahdad. I'm joined today by Stephen Carson, live in the studio.

Hi.

So this is going to be fun. And we're going to be talking about a few things. I think we're going to talk about the general breakdown and globalization coming on the ineffectiveness of sanctions and how China's

decided to start responding to sanctions. We might talk a little bit about Russia, Ukraine,

and the escalation there to try to draw Europe into a bigger conflict with Russia.

And it seems that the Iran war may or may not have restarted.

I just got some alerts saying that in the UAE, there are reports of incoming fire,

obviously from Iran, and obviously Trump is trying to reopen Hormuz.

So that might get things a bit spicy.

And I'm sure it's going to be good fun. Yeah, go for it. Why not? I was going to say, could we get an update? Yeah, sure.

Is that allowed? Although I don't know if live map will actually give it to us live, but it should be good.

So the first story for today is basically the Trump administration has sanctioned a bunch of refineries in China.

And unlike in the past where the United States would typically sanction some of the smaller players,

this time they sanction a refinery called Hengli, which is apparently one of the more important

private ones in China. And according to this, I believe Chinese account, it is indispensable for the northeast of China,

and it's a big part of China's plans for hydrogen energy and things like that.

Are they sanctioning it because Iranian crude is going into the...

Okay.

They're sanctioning.

I'm trying to understand why this is happening.

Yeah.

They're sanctioning it I'm trying to understand why this is happening. Okay.

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