Iran Stands to Make Billions as Trump Administration Waives Oil Sanctions

If you were upset about the Obama administration sending $1.7 billion to Iran in 2016 to settle a financial dispute between the two countries that spanned nearly 40 years, you’ll be really mad to learn that the US on Friday authorized the sale of Iranian oil currently at sea that will potentially put ten times as much money in Tehran’s pockets.

Or, of course, you are a hypocrite… and there will be a lot of hypocrites in Washington, DC, this weekend trying to explain this one.

To be fair, the two situations aren’t exactly the same. The funds sent to Tehran in 2016 consisted of Iranian money that had been held in a trust after the two governments agreed in 1979 to cancel arms sales (as well as the interest it had accumulated over the intervening 37 years).

Then, when the Iranian revolution broke out and the new regime held American embassy workers hostage, all of its assets were frozen and never returned until the two countries settled their dispute in the final year of Barack Obama’s second term.

Republicans have long maintained that sending this money to Iran was a poor decision.

One of them was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was then a Florida senator.

“President Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran was sweetened with an illicit ransom payment and billions of dollars for the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” he said at the time.

Apart from the fact that the nuclear deal was working, that it wasn’t a “ransom payment” but rather Iran’s own money, and that it wasn’t “billions of dollars,” it is a fair point. The US could have kept those assets frozen and risk that an international court would rule against it and award Tehran even more money.

We wonder what Rubio will say now that his colleague, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, announced that the US is lifting restrictions that will allow Iran to sell previously sanctioned oil.

Calling it a “narrowly tailored, short-term authorization permitting the sale of Iranian oil currently stranded at sea,” Bessent stated that his action would “quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran.”

He added that, “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury.”

Another way to put this is that, in essence, Iran will get to sell 140 million barrels of oil at more than $100/barrel and make $15 billion or so.

Bessent claimed that “Iran will have difficulty accessing any revenue generated and the United States will continue to maintain maximum pressure on Iran and its ability to access the international financial system.”

However, it seems possible that Tehran can circumvent those restriction… maybe they can work with that crypto billionaire Donald Trump pardoned last year. After all, according to a lawsuit filed by the families of Americans impacted by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, his company Binance, which is in business with the president’s family, seems to have some experience funneling money to terrorists.

Then again, this is all probably fine.

After all, according to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Trump “was aware of, and has calculated through, every permutation and every degree of strategy” in the conflict.

Apparently, one of these 4D chess moves was “Give Iran billions of dollars.”