US strikes Iran, reinstates oil sanctions, but Tehran has already raked in billions

The United States might be punishing Iran over recent strikes in the Strait of Hormuz, but Tehran has already positioned itself to rake in billions.

Overnight, US President Donald Trump vowed to hit the regime "hard" before launching a new wave of strikes.

"They hit a couple of ships and so we hit them much harder," he said.

It was a dramatic step up from a move earlier in the week, in which the US moved to curtail Iran's oil sales.

On Wednesday, Washington announced it was revoking a licence that had authorised the sale of Iranian oil as part of an interim deal to end the fighting.

The move was in response to strikes on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz that the US blamed on Iran and called "wholly unacceptable".

But the reinstatement of sanctions might do little to restrict the revenue Tehran is making on its oil sales.

Along with the lifting of sanctions, the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Iran and the US ended the American blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran has long traded its oil despite sanctions, but the US blockade physically stopped most of its shadow fleet from sailing.

As soon as US warships in the Gulf of Oman were no longer blocking Iranian vessels, Tehran pulled up anchor and moved tankers full of oil out of the region.

The blockade had forced Iran to store oil in order to not dramatically slow down production.

The Trump administration's warnings the regime was just days away from hitting its storage capacity, shutting down its oil production and causing irreversible damage to its facilities did not play out.

Now, with no blockade in place, the oil Tehran was storing has been unlocked and its shadow fleet can sail to its customers across the world, just as it did before the war.

Despite the strikes overnight, Mr Trump has said he does not think the war is going is going to start again.

Either way, analysts have found, even with the US restricting trade from its ports for several weeks, Tehran has made more revenue from its oil sales so far this year than it forecasted it would before Western bombs started to fall.

Iran beats its own forecasts

The US blockade on Iranian ports had been working to keep most of Tehran's fleet trapped inside the Gulf of Oman.

But that was only part of the picture.

In the lead-up to the war beginning in late February, Iran ramped up its production and shipped millions of barrels of oil to other parts of the world.

The regime was creating a cushion for itself because via ship-to-ship transfers, it could store oil far from home and transfer it to customers at sea, in locations beyond the blockade.

The blockade came into effect on April 14, Australian time. In early May, at the height of the blockade restricting Iranian ship traffic in the Gulf of Oman, analyst group Kpler said Tehran was storing more than 180 million barrels of oil at sea.

That meant sales could still be made and the buffer Iran had built for itself was working.

Before the war, Iran was selling its sanctioned oil at a discount for about $US53 a barrel, according to Obsidian Risk Advisors sanctions specialist Brett Erickson.

But the war created scarcity conditions and the price of oil shot up.

"In May, yes, we have [a] blockade imposed, but [Iran] still had so much oil outside the blockade line that they were able to sell it at $US117 per barrel," Mr Erickson said.

"So the price of the oil had more than doubled and Iran was able to really over achieve their revenues throughout the first half of the year by about 30 per cent beyond what they had projected."

Mr Erickson referenced an Iranian budget bill issued late last year that looked ahead and forecasted Tehran would export "1.77 million barrels per day at a price of 55 USD per barrel".

The Iranian budgetary year begins in March but using that rate of sale for a calendar year, Mr Erickson said Tehran "projected that they would make about $US35.5 billion this year in their oil revenues".

"In a six-month time period from January to July 1, you're looking at $17.75 billion," he said.

Analysing available Iranian oil sales data and Chinese imports information, Mr Erickson estimates Tehran generated more than $US23 billion from oil sales in the first half of 2026, exceeding its own pre-war forecasts.

Storing oil beyond the blockade line helped the regime keep its most lucrative industry going despite the US warships off its coastline.

But then the MOU was signed and a window opened.

The blockade blunder

When the war broke out, Iran immediately seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, choking the pivotal waterway and 20 per cent of the world's oil and gas shipments.

It has become one of the biggest leverage points in the war.

The US was under pressure to open the Strait of Hormuz and its blockade was one of the mechanisms by which it pressured the regime in return, bringing them back to the negotiation table.

The blockade was hurting Tehran, with very few ships getting through and storage filling up.

In peace talks, among the 14 points in the MOU, the US agreed to lift its blockade and Iran saw an opportunity to reset the clock ticking down on its storage issue.

Mr Erickson said Iran was able to move about 55 million barrels out of the region in the first 14 days of the MOU being in place, wiping out the impact of the blockade in the first half of June.

"By flooding those tankers out to the market, getting them outside of any potential reimposed US blockade line, moving empty tankers in that can draw down those onshore storage … [Iran could] essentially get a complete reset of their oil storage," he said.

"Which makes it untenable to posit that one could reimpose a blockade and cause these oil well shut-ins, which were a very flawed premise in the first place, but it essentially wipes that off the board entirely."

On the sidelines of NATO overnight, Mr Trump said the US "may put it [the blockade] back … and it'll only be a blockade for Iran."

Looking at oil revenue, the US blockade "was counterproductive in many ways," Mr Erickson said, but it did "cause significant damage" to Iran's economy across other sectors and applied pressure to the regime's leaders.

Tehran might be more comfortable passing economic pain onto its people than Western politicians, but ultimately both sides had a commercial imperative to get ships flowing through the Strait of Hormuz once again.

Neil Quilliam, an energy policy specialist and associate fellow at the Middle East North Africa program in Chatham House said Iran would not relinquish the strait.

"Iran will not cede its ability to exercise control over Hormuz, as it would risk losing a major point of leverage and is, therefore, willing to escalate against the US in order to preserve it," he said.

"Iran [is] making sure that it retains coercive control over Hormuz no matter the terms of the MOU."

Marine monitors have been watching the shipping activity in the region, with both Iranian and commercial ships attempting to leave the Strait of Hormuz.

The MOU had gradually brought a level of traffic back to the strait, but the recent strikes on commercial ships and military action from the US in response have meant the waterway is "functionally contested again" according to marine intelligence company Windward.

After two laden tankers were struck in the strait while taking the southern route near the Omani coast, six vessels immediately rerouted to the central corridor closer to Iran, and one LNG tanker carrying nearly 1 million barrels of cargo halted its journey, according to Windward.

Marine monitor Kpler reported similar activity, noting the incident marked "the most significant security event affecting commercial shipping in the strait since the US-Iran ceasefire".

"Even though Hormuz is now technically open, Iran has been dictating the terms of passage and made clear to vessels that pass through the Omani straight without coordinating closely with Iranian authorities that they will be targeted," Dr Quilliam said.

In response to the strikes on the commercial tankers, which the US blames on Iran, Washington took one of the points in the MOU and put a line through it.

The impact of sanction changes

Under the MOU, the US agreed to lift the restriction on the sale of Iranian oil for 60 days.

At the time, the US Department of Treasury issued General Licence X, authorising the "production, delivery and sale of crude oil, petrochemical products, and petroleum products of Iranian-origin through August 21, 2026".

But after the strikes on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the US announced that the sanctions waiver would be revoked effective July 17.

On Wednesday, the US also launched fresh strikes on Iranian targets, including more than 60 small boats of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps believed to be used to attack commercial shipping in the strait.

The US again struck Iran overnight, to further degrade the regime's "ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz".

The MOU is designed to give the US and Iran 60 days to reach a long-term peace agreement.

Iran's foreign ministry condemned the move to reinstate sanctions as a breach of the MOU and said Washington would bear responsibility for the consequences.

A US official said negotiators continued to work in good faith toward a final agreement with Iran, but control of the strait has given Tehran immense leverage, effectively allowing it to force a stalemate with one of the world's most powerful militaries.

Reinstating restrictions on Iran's oil trade pushes it back into the shadows and means any customers in international markets that were unwilling to trade with a sanctioned Tehran are again unavailable.

But just as was the case before the war, that is not every nation and, right now, there is no physical blockade in place.

And Windward is now reporting a new Iranian sanctions evasion technique, in which vessels broadcast "fabricated AIS anchorage tracks" while loading at the Kharg Island terminals.

In Mr Erickson's opinion, the economic warfare the US was attempting to inflict upon Iran "really backfired".

"Because a huge part of their economy is oil and when you create an oil shortage and an oil emergency, oil prices go up and they make more money,"

he said.