As the United States maintains a naval blockade of Iran’s ports and imposes more sanctions on its oil exports, Tehran is confronting another problem: billions of dollars in revenue from previous oil sales that it says have gone missing.
The accounting discrepancies and the government’s inability to recover money from private sellers entrusted with Iranian oil persisted until 2016, when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was signed and when sanctions on Iranian oil sales were lifted.
” For Bitsoff, who worked on nonproliferation and weapons procurement at OFAC and is now executive director of investigations at TANGOS, the distinction is central to understanding what decades of US sanctions against Iran can and cannot accomplish.
“By the end of it, ” Bitsoff said, Iran can be forced to absorb a “huge discount, ” meaning export volumes alone do not provide a complete measure of whether sanctions are working.
Instead, she said sanctions can help establish the conditions in which other forces operate, with political change ultimately depending on Iranians themselves.