Nevertheless Iran has managed to attract investment from the Chinese. “And I don’t really buy the argument that the Chinese companies go around over-paying on things that don’t make commercial sense,” says Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran Initiative and Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New American Foundation.“I’m more inclined to think that the Chinese companies do things that make commercial sense within their parameters, but their parameters are a much lower capital hurdle then a typical western IOC would have.”

“And I get the sense in some of the more recent deals that the Iranians have concluded with the Chinese, that they may have been given slightly better terms than what foreign companies have got in the past,” Leverett added. ...

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