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A super-yacht linked to sanctioned Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, one of very few vessels to transit the blockaded shipping lane at the heart of the US-Iran conflict.

Nord – a 142-metre yacht worth over $US500 million ($697 million) – left a Dubai marina around 2pm GMT on Friday (Saturday AEST), crossed the strait on Saturday morning and arrived in Muscat early on Sunday, according to data on the MarineTraffic platform.

It is not clear how the yacht gained permission to use the route. Since February, Iran has severely restricted traffic through the strait, which typically handles about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

A representative of steel magnate Mordashov declined to comment.

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China’s state-owned refiners have begun applying for government permits that would allow them to resume fuel exports in May, citing plentiful domestic stockpiles.

Top Chinese oil majors including China Petrochemical Corp and China National Petroleum Corp have since last week sought a green light to ship petrol and diesel, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the information is confidential.

Inventories across China swelled in the weeks following Beijing’s decision to curb exports in the early days of the Iran war, prioritising domestic supply at a time when the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was triggering panic among major importers of oil and refined products.

In the intervening weeks, however, higher domestic fuel prices have resulted in unexpectedly weak demand — in part because of electric vehicle use — relieving pressure on suppliers, said the sources. Export margins, meanwhile, have risen sharply.

Petrol and diesel inventories at state-owned refineries are at the highest level since 2025 and 2024 respectively, according to Mysteel OilChem data.

Bloomberg

Tankers laden with Iranian oil are clustering off Chabahar, a port in Iran that’s outside the Persian Gulf but just shy of the US blockade line.

About six to eight supertankers were idling in waters near the port in the Gulf of Oman late last week, according to satellite images and analyses from United Against Nuclear Iran and maritime intelligence firm Windward, with more smaller tankers nearby. It’s the same area where the US Navy said it had redirected two large crude carriers that it intercepted last week.

The build-up of tankers at Chabahar is more evidence that Iran is continuing to load oil onto ships, and also that the US blockade appears to be working as an effective barrier to stop the crude getting to customers. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is now near zero, and Tehran could soon have to start shutting-in production as storage space runs out.

Some 155 million barrels of Iranian crude are either in transit or floating in storage all over the world, according to an estimate from energy market intelligence firm Vortexa. The US has been increasing its pressure on Tehran by boarding tankers in the Indian Ocean and also sanctioning a major Chinese refiner that it said was a buyer of Iranian oil.

It’s unclear how many more empty tankers are available for Iran to load crude onto, but it appears to be bringing older vessels back into service. A 30-year-old “very large crude carrier”, a mega-oil ship capable of holding up to 2 million barrels of crude, last week began signalling from the Persian Gulf after having last delivered a cargo three years ago, ship-tracking data shows. The Nasha last broadcast its location four days ago, heading west toward Kharg Island, from where Iran exports most of its oil.

Bloomberg

Amid destruction and devastation in the wake of war, Iranians have found a rare glimmer of hope among one of the nation’s most endangered species. Iran has recorded a jump this year in its official number of Asiatic cheetahs, a subspecies now found only in Iran that has been on the brink of extinction for years.

Last year, Iranian authorities were aware of just 17 wild cats. But in 2026, Bagher Nezami, the project manager for the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, told Iranian state media that conservationists had recorded 21 new adult cheetahs and six cubs.

The Asiatic cheetah is one of the world’s fastest land animals. It has a smaller head, shorter legs and a stronger neck than the African cheetah. The Asiatic cheetahs used to roam the Arabian Peninsula, the lands around the Caspian Sea, and South Asia. Now, a species once favoured by kings prowls only Iran’s eastern desert and is under constant threat from hunters, speeding highway drivers and wild dogs.

Still, the cheetah’s survival in Iran is a source of national pride. The national soccer team’s jerseys are emblazoned with the spots of the wild cat, while the country’s Meraj Airlines has sought to raise awareness of the critically endangered species by painting cheetahs across its jets. “The Asiatic cheetah is really a symbol in Iran,” Iman Ebrahimi, an Iranian conservationist, said in an interview. “I think a big part of that is because people feel a connection to it. It has a place in our culture and history.”

Ancient Persia’s kings used the agile cats to hunt down gazelles. But in recent decades, the cheetah has become a victim of poaching, captivity and neglect, and its population rapidly dwindled to just a few dozen registered cats. More recently, the cheetah has been embraced by some backers of Iran’s political opposition as a symbol of innocence and resistance. During the country’s widespread “Women, Life, Freedom” demonstrations of 2022, the protest anthem Bayareh paid homage to Pirouz, a beloved cheetah cub born in captivity who later died. The New York Times