Iran's Illicit Oil Revenue Swells to Nearly $200 Billion Since Biden-Harris Took Office, Latest Figures and Estimates Show

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Iran’s illicit oil revenue has swelled to nearly $200 billion under the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest government figures and expert estimates, a windfall driven by the perennially lax enforcement of U.S. sanctions that has helped Tehran’s hardline regime obtain the cash needed to fund a brutal year-long war on Israel.

 

The full financial toll of this sanctions relief only became clear in recent days following the publication of a hotly anticipated U.S. government report on Iran's oil trade. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, a government agency that monitors global markets, was mandated under an April 2024 law to publicly tally Iran’s oil revenue, providing one of the first official snapshots after four years of sparse sanctions enforcement by the Biden-Harris administration.

The report, released late last week, found that Iran made $144 billion in revenue during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration. This includes $37 billion in 2021, significantly up from the $16 billion Tehran made in 2020, the last year of the Trump administration. Oil revenue rose to $54 billion in 2022 and hit $53 billion in 2023, showing that Tehran’s trade in crude remained at historically high levels.

Iran is on pace for another big year in 2024, exporting more than $34 billion in oil through October, according to figures compiled by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), an advocacy group that monitors Tehran's global oil shipments through a comprehensive tanker tracker.

The figures could explain why the Biden-Harris administration, facing criticism over the increasing chaos in the Middle East under its watch, announced late Friday a new package of sanctions on Iran’s petroleum exports. The measures grant broad authority for the American government to impose "sanctions against any person determined to operate in the petroleum or petrochemical sectors of the Iranian economy," according to the State Department.