In recent days, a report from the Washington Free Beacon has revealed that under the Biden-Harris administration, Iranian regime had access to approximately $200 billion in oil revenues through lax sanctions enforcement. This development was made clear after the publication of an eagerly awaited U.S. government report on Iran’s oil trade. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a government agency responsible for tracking global markets, was required by law passed in April 2024 to make public Iran’s oil revenue figures, providing one of the first official insights into the situation following years of minimal sanctions enforcement from the current administration.
The report, which was released towards the end of last week, found that during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, Iran earned a staggering $144 billion in revenue. In 2021, Tehran made $37 billion, which was significantly higher than the $16 billion it had generated in 2020 – the last year of the Trump administration. Oil revenues rose to $54 billion in 2022 and reached $53 billion in 2023, indicating that Iran’s crude oil trade remained at historically high levels.
The country is projected to have another banner year in 2024, with more than $34 billion worth of oil exports through October, according to data collected by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), an advocacy group that monitors Tehran’s global oil shipments through a comprehensive tanker tracker system.
The sanctions imposed on Iran by former President Donald Trump were so effective that they left the regime hesitant to confront the U.S., as stated in a 2020 New York Times article. In contrast, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris opted for a different approach upon taking office – seeking a renewed nuclear deal with Iran and deferring enforcement of oil sanctions.
Critics argue that the additional revenue now available to the Iranian regime has been used to fund terror attacks through its proxies. Joel B. Pollak, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot, is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak for more updates on this matter.