China imports more crude oil from Iran in September

China imported more crude from Iran in September 2013 compared to a year earlier despite the US-led sanctions imposed on Iran's oil and financial sectors, a report showed. China imported 475,521 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude oil last month, registering a 24-percent rise in comparison with the corresponding period last year. The figure was also nine percent higher than August’s 436,300 bpd level, Reuters reported on Monday. China, Iran's largest oil client, for the nine months through September bought 16.01mln tons of Iranian crude oil, or an average of 428,160 bpd. Trade between Iran and China in the past year was estimated at $45bln. Iran is currently China's third largest supplier of crude, providing Beijing with roughly 12 percent of its total annual oil consumption. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.