标签： Asia

On Wednesday, July 30, 2026, the United States announced a new round of sanctions targeting 10 Chinese shipping companies, alleging that the firms, with operations spanning mainland China and Hong Kong, along with eight registered tankers, have violated Washington’s existing restrictions on Iranian crude oil exports.

Under the terms of the new punitive measures, any assets held by the 10 companies within jurisdictions under U.S. control are frozen, and all U.S.-based companies and individual entities are legally barred from entering into any commercial transactions with the blacklisted firms. Two Iranian maritime insurance entities — Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority — were also added to the U.S. sanctions list. Washington accuses the two insurers of coercing commercial ships to buy their maritime insurance coverage as a requirement for secure transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global chokepoint for energy trade.

China has repeatedly and consistently pushed back against such unauthorized unilateral sanctions and extraterritorial long-arm jurisdiction, practices that Beijing says have no grounding in international law. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has once again urged the United States to immediately end these unlawful, unjust practices.

Anthony Moretti, an associate professor specializing in communication and organizational leadership at Pennsylvania’s Robert Morris University, shared his assessment of the U.S. approach in an interview with China Daily. Moretti noted that Washington has fallen into a repetitive pattern of announcing new bans and blockades in quick succession, all part of a persistent push to wield unilateral punitive measures. He pointed out that while the frequent use of these tools may create a domestic political image of toughness for the current U.S. administration, this perception is not shared by the international community. “The more the White House repeats this same narrative of punitive action, the less global attention and buy-in it receives,” Moretti said. He added that there is no evidence of a coherent, long-term strategy guiding these actions to resolve underlying regional tensions.

This latest round of sanctions marks a continuation of a years-long pressure campaign by successive U.S. administrations targeting what Washington claims are violations of its Iran oil blockade. Prior to the escalation of direct hostilities between the U.S. and Iran that began on February 28 this year, roughly 20% of global oil trade transited through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, that flow has slowed to a small fraction of its previous volume. To date, the Trump administration has blacklisted more than 100 tankers over allegations that they are attempting to circumvent the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, a tactic explicitly designed to cripple Iran’s national economy.

The escalation of U.S. unilateral sanctions comes amid growing global pushback against long-arm jurisdiction and extraterritorial punitive measures, with many world governments arguing that such actions violate core principles of sovereign trade and international law.

Weeks after taking office as UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham is facing growing international and domestic backlash over plans to rapidly approve the reopening of two stalled North Sea oil and gas projects, with campaigners warning the move would violate the United Kingdom’s binding international legal obligations due to key links between a major stakeholder and illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The two projects at the center of the debate are the Rosebank field, located off the Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic, and the Jackdaw field off Scotland’s North Sea coast. Both developments were originally approved by the former Conservative government between 2022 and 2023, but court challenges overturned those approvals in 2025, leaving the final decision to Burnham’s new Labour administration.

Ithaca Energy, which holds a 20% stake in the Rosebank project, is majority-owned by Israeli energy conglomerate Delek Group. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights includes Delek Group on its official database of companies identified as having links to illegal West Bank settlements, activities that raise “particular human rights concerns.” Further, Delek holds a hundreds-of-millions-of-pounds contract to supply fuel to the Israeli military during its ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely labeled as genocide by human rights groups.

Investigative reporting by UK outlet The Ferret has found that since 2020, Delek Group has extracted more than $1 billion in dividends from its Ithaca Energy stake across six of the UK’s 10 largest oil and gas fields. If Rosebank is approved, Delek stands to gain an additional £200 million in future profits from the project.

Karla McLaren, government and political relations manager at Amnesty International UK, told Middle East Eye that approving the project would directly contradict the UK’s long-stated commitments to upholding international law. “It would totally fly in the face of the UK’s international legal responsibilities for the UK to be granting concessions or contracting with any company that has enabled, facilitated or profited from the construction of Israel’s settlements, which are war crimes,” McLaren said.

The planned approval also comes at a time of unprecedented climate pressure, as Europe grapples with record-breaking heatwaves. It also follows the suppression of a 2025 joint UK intelligence assessment that warned the climate crisis poses a severe, immediate threat to UK national security.

The push to reopen the North Sea fields has already drawn enthusiastic support from US President Donald Trump, who celebrated the expected move in a post on his Truth Social platform, claiming Burnham’s decision would transform the UK “from a Poverty Stricken Disaster, to one of the Richest Countries anywhere in the World!” Trump had previously criticized Keir Starmer, Burnham’s predecessor as Labour Prime Minister, for refusing to advance the projects, telling The Telegraph in an April interview that “all Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof” and repeating his signature rallying cry of “drill baby drill.”

The projects had been blocked by former UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, but mounting political pressure led to Miliband’s reassignment to the role of Foreign Secretary in Burnham’s recent cabinet reshuffle, clearing the way for a potential approval. The White House has already expressed deep concern over Miliband’s appointment, with Trump having previously attacked Miliband as a “net zero zealot.”

From his first days in office, Burnham has moved to align his administration closely with Trump’s foreign policy priorities. On July 20, the day he took office, Burnham called Trump to confirm that securing shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz was “at the top of his agenda.” Just two days later, his administration approved the continued use of UK military bases for US airstrikes targeting Iran.

Rudy Schulkind, a political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told MEE that the upcoming decision will stand as one of the most defining tests of Burnham’s premiership. “Caving to demands from Donald Trump and the fossil fuel lobby by backing Rosebank would signal that powerful corporate interests still hold more sway than the public interest – it would also undermine the UK’s climate commitments and contradict Burnham’s own pledge to uphold international law in Palestine, given Rosebank’s links to Israeli energy company Delek,” Schulkind said.

The controversy comes shortly after Burnham issued a public apology for the Labour Party’s “initial response” to the crisis in Gaza, acknowledging that the party “need to do better.” His predecessor, Keir Starmer, faced widespread international condemnation in October 2023 after stating that Israel had the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, a form of collective punishment explicitly banned under international law. When Starmer avoided calling for an immediate ceasefire during Israel’s military offensive that began after October 7, 2023, Burnham – then serving as Mayor of Manchester – broke with party leadership alongside London Mayor Sadiq Khan to publicly demand a ceasefire.

While Burnham has acknowledged the “unbearable suffering” in Gaza as “a scar on our collective conscience,” he has stopped short of labeling the military campaign a genocide, saying the determination must be left to international courts. Political analysts note his recent apology was crafted to address voter anger over Labour’s Gaza policy, after a study found that more than half of former Labour voters who switched to smaller center or left-wing parties cited the party’s Gaza stance as a key factor in their decision.

Patrick Galey, head of investigations at climate and human rights charity Global Witness, told MEE that Burnham appears to believe voter anger over Labour’s previous policies can be resolved with public relations adjustments, but “actions speak louder than words.” Galey explained that approving the North Sea projects is widely understood within political circles as a concession to the fossil fuel industry, a tactic the Labour Party has used in an attempt to appease powerful corporate interests.

Data from 2024 investigative work by outlet DeSmog supports this framing: major oil and gas firms are represented by lobbyists who have donated more than £300,000 to the Labour Party, while the opposition Conservative Party received 40% of all its donations during the 2024 election campaign’s first week from fossil fuel interests. “A lot of our political class are bought by the oil and gas lobby,” Galey said, adding that this proximity to fossil fuel interests shapes how political leaders understand climate change – a dynamic he says is on clear display as Burnham prioritizes economic growth even as neighboring France and Spain face catastrophic wildfires driven by rising global temperatures.

Stella Swain, youth and student officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told MEE that approving the projects would make a “mockery” of Burnham’s recent apology for Labour’s previous Gaza stance. Mothin Ali, deputy leader of the UK Green Party, echoed that criticism, telling MEE: “Burnham’s half-baked apology for Labour’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza is meaningless if he refuses to back it up with concrete actions.”

While Burnham’s government has framed the move as a solution to the UK’s ongoing cost of living crisis and a way to strengthen national energy security amid global market instability caused by tensions with Iran, Galey argues that only foreign corporations and their wealthy shareholders will actually benefit from the decision. Because all oil and gas produced from the North Sea fields is sold on the global open market, prices are set by international geopolitical forces – including conflicts stoked by Trump’s policy in the Middle East, which the UK is supporting through its hosting of US airstrikes from British bases.

Galey added that since Brexit, the UK has grown far more dependent on the United States for energy imports, in contrast to countries like Spain that have invested heavily in domestic renewable energy. That investment has given Spain “political freedom,” Galey explained, allowing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to push back against Trump’s demands on Palestine and Iran, because energy independence means “you don’t need to pander to the whims of the mob boss in the White House.”

Galey pointed out that fossil fuel companies often frame regional conflicts and energy crises as unforeseen events that require expanded oil and gas exploration, but these crises are not accidental side effects of a fossil fuel-based energy system – they are inherent features of it. Lauren MacDonald, lead campaigner for the activist group Stop Rosebank, emphasized that approving the project would be a morally indefensible choice. “Greenlighting the oil field would be a morally reprehensible decision that turns a blind eye to the fact that the project could bolster Delek’s activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – which the UN flagged for human rights violations,” MacDonald said. “The UK government is well aware of these risks, and has even been warned that it could breach its own obligations under international law if it allows the field to go ahead.”

The UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero declined to comment on the specific projects, saying it cannot prejudice future decision-making. Both Delek Group and Ithaca Energy also did not respond to requests for comment from Middle East Eye.

Australia’s national online safety regulator has launched landmark civil legal proceedings against global messaging platform Telegram, accusing the service of failing to eliminate violent extremist and pro-terrorism content that includes graphic footage of two of the deadliest white supremacist mass shootings of recent years and Islamic State beheading videos.

In a public announcement Thursday, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant laid out the charges against the UAE-headquartered platform, which claims more than 1 billion monthly active users across the globe. If Australia’s Federal Court rules against Telegram, the company faces a maximum fine of 54.6 million Australian dollars, equivalent to roughly 38 million U.S. dollars, for its alleged persistent failure to identify and remove material that promotes terrorist violence.

This court proceeding marks a high-stakes test of Australia’s 2021 Online Safety Act, which mandates that large digital platforms implement rigorous systems to exclude illegal and terrorism-linked content from their services. The case specifically centers on the availability of content tied to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack, which left 51 Muslim worshippers dead at the hands of an Australian white supremacist who livestreamed his violence, and the 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting that killed 10 Black people, carried out by a white supremacist who cited the Christchurch attacker as inspiration. It also covers the presence of Islamic State propaganda videos depicting executions.

Regulators have long struggled with the persistence of these extremist digital artifacts years after the original attacks, as the graphic footage and accompanying manifestos continue to be shared by radicalized users to recruit new sympathizers and inspire copycat violence. Inman Grant emphasized that the content in question remained accessible on Telegram long after the platform was formally notified of its existence, noting that the platform’s unique structure — which supports public channels with unlimited audience reach and large group chats — creates an outsized responsibility to proactively remove harmful material. Channels linked to these attacks have been repeatedly used to host copies of the attack footage and praise the perpetrators.

Telegram has issued a firm denial of all allegations, stating in a written statement shared via the platform that it “reject these allegations and will contest them in court.” The company argues that its ongoing anti-terrorism work is a matter of public record, pointing to published data showing it has blocked more than 150,000 terrorist-linked communities on its platform so far in 2024. The company also framed its approach to content moderation as a defense of fundamental digital rights, noting that it has supported pro-democracy movements across the world, from Russia and Iran to Myanmar and Hong Kong, by protecting user privacy and preserving freedom of speech and assembly.

Inman Grant countered that the regulator first pressed Telegram to remove the problematic content and align with Australian rules in March 2024, but received no response for months. She added that the platform’s stance only shifted after French authorities arrested Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov in August 2024. Durov, a Russian billionaire, was held for four days of questioning over allegations that Telegram was used to facilitate a range of illegal activity, including drug trafficking and the spread of child sexual abuse material, before being released on 5 million euro bail. According to Inman Grant, Telegram became temporarily more cooperative with Australian and global regulators following Durov’s arrest, but still maintains what she called a “permissive hosting environment for terrorist content.”

The legal action comes amid mounting global pressure on Durov and Telegram: just days before the Australian claim was filed, Russia’s Federal Security Service added Durov to its international wanted list, accusing him of aiding terrorist activity, marking the latest in a string of legal challenges for the executive that have also included previous cases in Russia and France.