Russian-Chinese veto blocks a US draft resolution to extend the work of the sanctions committee on Iran, Al Hadath reports

A Russian-Chinese veto on a US draft is the standard pattern of great-power friction inside the Security Council on Iran files; episodes of this kind have historically mattered less for the procedural outcome itself than for what they signal about the erosion of the multilateral sanctions architecture, since enforcement rather than formal committee work is what binds physical barrels. The concrete channel to crude is the snapback question: vetoes that block the extension of sanctions-related bodies tend to precede disputes over whether UN restrictions formally lapse or are reimposed, and the two cases behave differently, with formal snapback threatening compliance risk for buyers and insurers while a quiet lapse leaves flows governed by US secondary sanctions alone. Freight, insurance and the shadow-fleet discount are where past episodes of sanctions ambiguity have shown up first, not headline flat price. The actors' prior form is well established: Moscow and Beijing have consistently shielded Tehran procedurally, and Washington's fallback has been unilateral designation rather than consensus. Worth watching is any follow-on invocation of the snapback mechanism by the E3 or the US, and whether enforcement rhetoric on Iranian exports tightens in practice.