China's teapot refiners hoard cheap Iranian crude ahead of the waiver clock

China’s independent teapot refiners lifted Iranian crude imports to an eight-month high, stockpiling discounted barrels before the 60-day sanctions waiver runs out. The discount Tehran offered during the blockade has barely narrowed despite the formal reopening — because the buyers pricing the cargo do not believe the waiver survives its own expiry. The teapots are doing what teapots do: arbitraging legal ambiguity. Every discounted barrel stored today is a hedge against a sanctions snapback tomorrow. The waiver was meant to normalize Iranian flows. Instead it turned them into a countdown. The infrastructure of evasion built over a decade does not get dismantled by a sixty-day memo from Treasury.