As happened when Western countries attempted to cripple Russia economically over the war in Ukraine, a similar phenomenon is now happening with Iran as American and Israeli efforts to obliterate that country are backfiring. According to an article in The Economist on March 29, Iran is now earning nearly twice as much from oil exports as it was before the start of hostilities on February 28. According to sources it interviewed, Iran is now exporting the same amount of oil as it did on average last year, if not more, at 2.4m-2.8m barrels of oil and petroleum products per day. With the recent price increases, Iran’s oil revenues have soared. This, while the exports of all the other oil producing nations in the region have collapsed, throwing the world’s economies into crisis.
In addition, The Economist reports that efforts to sanction and isolate Iran’s access to Western banking and financial infrastructure have similarly fallen flat. The authors credit much of this to China, which still imports 90% of Iran’s oil, and which has helped Iran to set up a “shadow payment system” in Asia. “The density of their networks of accounts—numbering in the thousands—allows them to weather shocks created by the war,” resulting in the flows of money being impossible to trace and therefore impossible to stop.
The Economist writes in conclusion: “Short of all-out strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure—to which Iran would respond by bombing that of other Gulf states—it will not be throttled.”
