Iran’s efforts to evade international sanctions on its oil exports have persisted, with a damning new repot revealing that illicit Iranian crude continues to be offloaded at Chinese ports.

The advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) recently disclosed satellite evidence showing two vessels, HECATE and ELVA, offloading massive cargoes of Iranian crude at China’s Dongjiakou port. HECATE was loaded from an Iranian tanker on March 25 and was quickly blacklisted as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity on April 4. Meanwhile, ELVA, which has a track record of sanctions violations, took on Iranian oil from Kharg Island on April 2.

“China’s continued, willful disregard for counterterrorism sanctions is directly enabling Iran’s ability to finance terrorism around the globe,” said UANI Chief Claire Jungman. “Beijing’s enforcement has been utterly lackluster.”

Despite strengthened international sanctions, Iran’s oil exports have surged, from around 400,000 barrels per day in the immediate aftermath of harsh 2019 U.S. sanctions to over 1,500,000 barrels currently, according to the report.

To bypass the sanctions regime, Iran utilizes an increasingly sophisticated network of front companies, intermediaries, and illicit ship-to-ship transfers to obfuscate the origin of its oil exports. Intelligence assessments indicate that Iran systematically diverts a portion of the revenues to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its regional proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, indirectly funding their budgets while circumventing direct financial allocations.