In 2018, the Trump administration imposed a battery of sanctions on the Islamic Republic that, if successfully enforced, make it impossible for it to export petroleum—the country’s main source of revenue. Tehran has responded by creating what Eyal Pinko dubs a “shadow fleet” of tankers to bring its fossil fuels to nations without scruples about evading sanctions:

The Iranian tanker fleet includes about 143 tankers, capable of carrying more than 102 million barrels of crude oil or fuel and 11.8 million barrels of liquefied natural gas daily, with a total value of over $7.7 billion per day. With [this] fleet, Iran began to transport oil secretly to China, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, and Venezuela.

Iran and China signed a strategic cooperation agreement in the early 2000s. Based on this agreement, China transferred technological knowledge and production lines of weapons, aircraft, and missiles to Iran. In return, Iran [became] China’s main oil supplier.

Iran’s perspective toward the United States and other Western countries, and its hostility toward them, is an essential tool in the hands of China. . . . For China, Iran is a frontier state against the U.S. in the Persian Gulf. It draws U.S. attention away from the South China Sea, where China is expanding its naval power and taking over maritime territories belonging to the region’s countries.

China is also assisting Iran in selling pirated oil and using the Iranian tanker fleet—the new shadow fleet—for oil-bypassing sanctions. . . . China is even helping Iran operate its shadow fleet so that the tankers will not be detected.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.