Economic war against Iran could end in defeat for US allies — expert

LONDON, August 25. /TASS/. Iran possesses greater capacity to inflict damage on energy sectors of the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf than vice versa, Jorge Leon, Rystad Energy’s senior vice president and head of geopolitical analysis, said in a comment to TASS.

"The biggest oil-market risk may not be the [US] sanctions themselves, but Iran’s response to them. Tehran has threatened to treat countries supporting the US campaign as participants in the war and has again raised the prospect of preventing oil from leaving the Persian Gulf. This creates an important asymmetry for the oil market: there may be relatively little additional Iranian oil left for [US] sanctions to remove, but Iran still has considerable capacity to disrupt everybody else’s exports," he explained.

Meanwhile, Washington’s statements appear tougher than its actual actions now, Leon noted. "The actual announcement came across as much less dramatic than anticipated, with a wide gap between the rhetoric and the substance, at least going by the initial comments. What we have seen so far looks much more like an expansion of the existing sanctions regime than a fundamentally new economic weapon," he said.

According to the expert, "what matters now is not the announcement itself, but whether China complies and whether Iran retaliates." "The real question now is how aggressively Washington is prepared to enforce secondary sanctions against Iran’s remaining trading partners. China is the key. Iranian crude exports have already fallen sharply because of the blockade, and Beijing is essentially the only significant buyer left. Unless China materially reduces purchases further, the additional impact on Iranian oil revenues could be relatively limited," he said.

"Washington is trying to turn the military blockade into a much broader economic blockade. But after decades of sanctions, Iran has developed a highly resilient survival economy," Leon added. "More economic pain does not necessarily translate into political capitulation," he concluded.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced earlier that Washington planned to sharply tighten its unilateral sanctions regime against Iran, aiming to completely block Tehran’s revenue sources. The US would be prepared to impose secondary sanctions on any countries refusing to comply with new restrictive measures against Iran, Bessent said. He also threatened such nations with a loss of access to the dollar.

On August 24, the US administration added 48 legal entities, 24 individuals, and six oil tankers to its sanctions list against Iran. Citizens and companies from Azerbaijan, Greece, India, Iran, China, Malaysia, the Marshall Islands, the UAE, Singapore, Turkey, Ukraine, France, and Switzerland were blacklisted.