Iran vs. the world

Now, why am I not surprised by this news: China not in favor of referring Iran nuclear issue to UN [Xinhua News]?

Obviously the further escalation of the nuclear issue in Iranian would be very bad.

As a test case for [growing?] Chinese power it could be quite interesting though. Previously, China has not cooperated in the UNSC when it came to Sudan sanctions. I expect the same will happen in the Iran case this time. It would be quite interesting to see how the rest of the UNSC would deal with this. [Let's hope it won't come to this though!]

Anyway, the link?
About 14% of Chinese oil imports come from Iran. And about 9/10% come from Sudan. No need to say that these numbers give the two countries a lot of leverage over Chinese interests! Economic sanctions on Iran will most likely have effects in one way or another on the substantial oil industry and will therefore harm a stable oil delivery to China. Well, if you would think ahead a little bit more it would tighten the oil market further, continuing the rise in world wide oil prices. I think not a day goes by that my daily paper does not report on new record prices for oil.

Oh, and incidentally, Japan is also dependant on oil imports from Iran for about 15%. I wonder how the current crisis is regarded in Japan. The papers (well, the online versions) don't appear to be making it as huge as in Europe, but Japan is probably tied up with its own political problems.

Of course, the Japanese attitude towards Iran could also possibly be of some influence on the Japanese bid for a permanent seat on the UNSC. Considering the Japanese dependence on Iranian oil, sanctions will not be beneficial either to the substantial Japanese investments in Iran.