Dalga Khatinoglu
Oil, gas and Iran economic analyst
Oil, gas and Iran economic analyst
While Iran has effectively choked off oil exports by its Arab neighbors through the Strait of Hormuz, it has continued shipping its own crude largely uninterrupted.
Failure to restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is beginning to show what prolonged disruption could mean for global energy markets.
Iran has shown it can disrupt regional energy flows. What remains far less clear is whether it can use that leverage to shape the outcome of the conflict in its favor.
China appears to be replacing disrupted Venezuelan oil shipments with Russian crude rather than Iranian barrels, despite steeper discounts being offered by Tehran.
Capital flight from Iran is accelerating just as oil revenues decline, according to new data from the Central Bank of Iran—a convergence that helps explain the sharp fall of the national currency in recent months.
Iran’s oil exports declined sharply at the start of 2026, new tanker-tracking data show, raising fresh questions about the durability of Tehran’s most important economic lifeline under renewed US sanctions pressure.
Tehran’s frequently invoked threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz may be far easier to signal than to carry out, not least because it would harm allied China more than the hostile West.
One year after US President Donald Trump returned to the White House and revived the "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran from his first term, available data show the country’s energy exports remain largely intact.
A 25 percent tariff on US imports from any country that trades with Iran appears aimed at punishing third countries, but it is likely to hit Tehran far harder.
The fate of the Iranian economy is increasingly shaping debates about the country’s future—one that may prove decisive regardless of how its current political struggles unfold.
