Secret ‘understandings’ are being withheld from Congress, as the regime’s oil exports to China are booming and victims of terror are the losers.
President Biden is busily pursuing diplomatic “understandings” with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, and diplomatic details are shrouded in secrecy in defiance of Congress, which is obliged to review any agreement with Iran. Yet, even before a deal is reached, and even as the White House insists otherwise, a surge in Iranian oil exports shows that the fraying of the sanction regime against Tehran is plain to see.
Iran has exported 2.2 million oil barrels daily in the first 20 days of August, far exceeding previous export numbers, Bloomberg reports. At current global crude prices, the oil sales add some $150 million a day to the mullahs’ dwindling coffers. As a former adviser on Iran to the State Department, Gabriel Noronha, notes, at the height of President Trump’s “maximum pressure” Iran oil exports were reduced to around 300,000 barrels a day.
The mullahs’ top client is Communist China, which imports 1.5 million Iranian oil barrels a day. Yet, a flow of Iranian oil to world markets could help lower rates at America’s pump as well. On the other hand, it surely undermines Secretary Blinken’s statement earlier this month that America “will continue to enforce all of our sanctions” and “will continue to push back on Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region and beyond.”
