It looks like the U.S. is moving forward with a new round of economic sanctions on Iran, with the backing of key nations including China. Some major developments broke on this story last week while I was otherwise occupied, so a quick update is in order.

A new round of sanctions has been problematic for the U.S. without the support of countries like Russia and China. This highlights one of the problems with economic sanctions: in order for them to be effective, you need to include the target nation’s top trading partners. That’s easier said than done, of course, since that trading partner will be quite reluctant to forego that economic activity.

In the case of Iran, top trading partners include Russia and China. One of the big questions during this negotiation process has been whether these countries would go along with the program.

I’ve written about this a few times already, and have questioned whether China would agree to a U.S. sanctions plan that, in some ways, was against Chinese interests. Last week, it appeared as though China had done so, after the U.S. announced that both Russia and China had signed on to a new round of sanctions that the U.S. would subsequently bring before the U.N.

One of ways forward that I have mentioned in the past was a sanctions program that had significant waivers for China trade with Iran. I have also suggested that China would seek to water down the general sanctions language as well, at least to the extent that it could go to Iran and claim that it was trying to minimize the pain.

From the news so far, it looks like both of things happened. Time magazine reports:

Analyst Peter Lee points out that the Chinese are claiming, through commentaries in official publications, that Beijing extracted a significant price for its support.

Not only has Beijing watered down the sanctions to be adopted by the Security Council in order to ensure they don’t restrain China from expanding its already massive economic ties with Iran; Chinese analysts also claim that, in the course of a protracted series of negotiations with Washington, their government also won undertakings from Washington to exempt Chinese companies from any U.S. unilateral sanctions that punish third-country business partners with the Islamic Republic.

In my previous writing on this, I talked about “winners” and “losers,” suggesting that China would be a winner if it extracted these concessions. I’ll stand by that within the context of U.S.-China bilateral negotiations.

At the same time, though, if the U.S. is willing to accept this China carve out, believing that the resulting sanctions package is tough enough, then the U.S. is also a winner, at least with respect to the nuclear issue.

Once again, though, China has had the upper hand and was in a position of strength against the U.S. Let’s see what effect this has the next time the U.S. and China are in negotiations over another multilateral issue.