Cangzhou, China —
A few hundred miles from where Chinese leader Xi Jinping will roll out the red carpet for President Donald Trump this week, a shadowy ecosystem has long been at work pumping billions of dollars into Iran’s economy – now helping keep Tehran afloat in defiance of the US.
These are the ports, pipelines, and oil refineries of Shandong province and its borderlands, where the hulking architecture of oil storage tanks and spindly profiles of smokestacks jut up from barren, coastal flatlands.
Here, so-called “teapot refineries” – small, independent oil companies that operate with the permission of Beijing – quietly process US-sanctioned Iranian crude into gas, diesel…