But with an election on the horizon, the U.S. isn't inclined to clamp down on the world's most genocidal, warmongering tyrants

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Three events, separated in time and space. All part of the same story, the same war.

Last May in Malaysian waters, near the mouth of the Malacca Straits, an explosion destroyed the rusty Gabon-registered oil tanker Pablo, tearing off its deck and prompting the ship’s 28 crewmen to jump into the sea for safety. Three went missing and were never recovered.

This past New Year’s Day, Vladimir Putin’s Russia launched a record 90 suicide drones at various targets across Ukraine. All but three of the drones were intercepted, but a 15-year-old boy was killed and seven people were wounded in the Black Sea port city of Odesa.

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In a massive response to six months of persistent rocket attacks from across Israel’s northern border, the Israel Defense Forces hit 40 fortified targets in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, killing half of Hezbollah’s commanders in the area, according to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The fulcrum balancing these three events is the Quds Force of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The money behind it all is Chinese.

It’s not called a “shadow war” for nothing.

Despite years of United Nations sanctions, on-again, off-again unilateral American restraints and the Khomeinist regime’s standing with North Korea and Myanmar on the 200-nation Financial Action Task Force blacklist, Iran performed better than any other member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) last year. Iran held its title as OPEC’s third-biggest producer, with crude oil exports up 50 per cent in 2023, reaching a five-year output high of about 1.29 million barrels per day.

China buys between 80 and 90 per cent of Iran’s sanctioned oil exports. Iranian crude is carried by a growing global fleet of creaky, often uninsured and opaquely-owned oil tankers, like the Pablo, which turned into a bomb from fumes in its hold. Its owner, ostensibly a company registered in the Marshall Islands, is nowhere to........

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