US hardball tactics will not prevent Iran from selling its crude abroad, the country’s oil minister said on Wednesday.
In came in response to threats by Donald Trump to eliminate the Islamic Republic’s exports if it continues antagonising Washington.
“We will not sit idly by while they apply maximum pressure, and this maximum pressure theory is a failed one,” oil minister Mohsen Paknejad said after a cabinet meeting in Tehran, according to his Telegram channel.
Paknejad’s statement came one day after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to sharpen sanctions against Iran to force Tehran into deals over its nuclear programme and the Middle East.
The US has been imposing draconian sanctions on Iran’s oil industry for years. Iran, however, still manages to sell its oil abroad — even though at much lower levels than in the past decades.
If “sanctions and restrictions continue”, his country will adapt to them, Paknejad said on Wednesday.
To drive the point home, Paknejad said that Iran’s monthly oil exports rose to their highest level in more than 10 years for January and that his country will soon sign “one of the largest oil contracts in [its] history”.
He did not cite any figures or details to back up his claim. One Azeri media outlet reported that Paknejad’s statements refer to crude oil exports for the 30 days ending 19 January.
A 10-year export high for January does not chime with figures provided by UANI — a Washington-based, pro-sanctions pressure group chaired by former Florida governor Jeb Bush and which has former chiefs of Israel’s and Germany’s intelligence services on its advisory board.
According to UANI figures, Iran exported 1.38m barrels per day of crude in January, which is slightly below the country’s 1.43m bpd performance in the same month of 2024.
Again according to UANI, Iran’s monthly exports had reached even higher levels during 2024, with monthly exports at 1.87m bpd in September.
On 19 December, before Trump took office, the US expanded sanctions on vessels transporting Iranian crude. According to the International Energy Agency, the new sanctions covered ships carrying nearly one-third of Iran’s.
China accounts for almost all of Iran’s oil exports, usually through small independent refineries buying Iranian crude after blending it with crude from other countries.
In the past, Tehran has threatened it would react to any attack against its territory by closing the Hormuz Strait, a key artery to the international oil trade.
