WANA (Oct 06) – Data from oil shipment tracking firms show that Iran’s crude exports in September surged to their highest level in seven years, reaching close to 2 million barrels per day.

 

According to TankerTrackers, Iran’s crude oil exports in September 2025 climbed to levels unseen since mid-2018.

 

This sharp increase came just two months after Western governments attempted to leverage public pressure around the “snapback” mechanism, which they formally activated against Iran last September. Despite these measures, Iran’s oil exports approached the 2 million barrel mark — a volume previously recorded only during the implementation of the JCPOA.

In early September, shortly before this rise, several senior officials involved in Iran’s oil sales — including deputies from the Finance Ministry and the National Iranian Oil Company — were dismissed.

 

Energy diplomacy expert Mohammad Hosseini noted: “Sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sales have placed heavy pressure on the country’s economy.” However, another analyst, Hossein Karimi, argued that sanctions are only effective when domestic actors lack the motivation or capacity to neutralize them.

 

A report by Iran’s Parliamentary Research Center emphasized that concentrated oil sales through official channels to strategic partners remain the most effective way to blunt even the toughest sanctions on the country’s export network.