Iran is losing leverage over the Strait of Hormuz as oil exports recover under the protection of the U.S. military, but the Islamic Republic is unlikely to stand by and watch while its own economy crumbles.
This past week, JPMorgan said Middle East crude exports reached about 17.5 million barrels per day, or 98% of prewar levels. Goldman Sachs was even more bullish, estimating that exports from Persian Gulf producers hit 19 million barrels per day.
Similarly, Kpler declared Gulf crude exports have recovered to prewar levels, though it said the September number was at least 16.5 million barrels.
“The recovery has reshaped regional oil logistics,” it said on Wednesday. “Around 40% of crude now leaves without crossing Hormuz, up from 17% before the war, as Saudi Arabia and the UAE make greater use of pipeline routes. Of the crude that crossed Hormuz in August, more than 70% changed tankers offshore. The volumes have recovered, but through a fundamentally different export system.”
While crude prices remain high, with refined fuels like diesel suffering an even worse shock, the rebound in Gulf oil flows has come despite the U.S. naval blockade keeping Iran’s exports at essentially zero.
President Donald Trump and others in his administration have touted the numbers, boasting the U.S. now controls the strait and predicting Iran’s economy will soon come completely undone.
But analysts have warned the Iranian regime, facing an existential threat to its rule, could re-escalate the war and reassert its grip on the oil trade.
In fact, attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf have been on the rise in recent days. While the U.S. military is protecting ships and has degraded Iran’s ability to target them, drones and missiles still find their marks on occasion.
The attacks haven’t deterred all tankers from making the risky transit, but they keep shipping and insurance costs high, preventing the market from fully returning to normal.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, argued Iran’s influence over the region’s energy trade isn’t limited to the Strait of Hormuz.
He pointed out Iran can still destroy oil infrastructure, such as drilling and refining capacity—and can escalate if “Trump isn’t feeling enough pain to take the diplomatic off-ramps being put in front of him.”
Indeed, Trump has rejected Tehran’s offer to restart talks with a seven-day ceasefire that would fully reopen the strait in exchange for the U.S. lifting its blockade and unfreezing assets.
Rather than return to diplomacy, Trump expects to start bombing Iran again after the U.S. midterm elections are over, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, he is also deploying the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and the USS Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, comprised of three amphibious ships and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, to the Middle East.
U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Fernando Cruz Martinez
“So while the risk premium around oil flows may seem tolerable for Trump, the threats to energy production infrastructure in the Gulf remain significant, which is exactly why regional countries are still trying to mediate a return to a durable ceasefire and diplomatic agreement,” Batmanghelidj posted on X on Monday. “Trump too, is erratic, and could give cause to Iran to escalate in this way through his own fixation on ‘winning’ the war.”
He added that Iran’s attacks on U.S. bases in the Mideast as well as on Gulf cities and infrastructure were far more consequential as they highlighted the U.S. failure to mitigate or degrade the threat.
So while the U.S. military can keep oil flowing, it’s no longer able to guarantee security across the Gulf region, providing Iran leverage in any negotiations, Batmanghelidj said.
“Iran did not wage a scorched earth campaign—but it may yet do so if the current situation persists for too long,” he warned. “That is what everyone who actually follows this region and its dynamics is worried about.”
Of course, Iran’s own oil infrastructure would also face destruction as the U.S. and its Gulf allies retaliate.
For now, Trump has signaled he will let his economic warfare against Iran play out, and the U.S. tightened its sanctions further last month, making it harder for Tehran to move money through front companies and other shadowy intermediaries.
As Iran’s ability to generate oil revenue fades, the currency has plunged to new lows, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian complained the regime’s money in China is blocked.
“We can’t even get our own money out of a country to which we’ve supplied goods, let alone using those funds to pay someone else in another corner of the world,” he told Fox News last week.
