🩸 🛢️ 🔒 💰 🕳️ #2026091901 — The Sanctions Industry: When Isolation Becomes Someone’s Business Model
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There is an apparent contradiction at the center of Iran’s sanctions economy. Sanctions can be economically damaging to Iran while simultaneously becoming extraordinarily profitable for some of the people who operate inside the machinery created to circumvent them. Once that distinction is understood, something that initially sounds impossible begins to make sense: a country can have a powerful economic interest in ending sanctions while particular networks inside that same country may have a financial interest in preserving the conditions sanctions create.
This is the central implication of investigative journalist Yashar Soltani’s discussion of Iran’s oil trade. His argument is not that selling oil under sanctions is unnecessary, nor does he deny that secrecy, traders, financial intermediaries and unconventional payment routes may become unavoidable when ordinary banking channels are blocked. His argument is more fundamental. Sanctions have transformed what should be a relatively understandable commercial transaction into a long chain of traders, trustees, banks, currency conversions, hidden accounts, security approvals and politically sensitive intermediaries. The more complicated the journey becomes, the more places there are for someone to collect a fee, hold money, control access or avoid responsibility.
That does not mean sanctions are financially beneficial to Iran as a nation. Historical evidence points strongly in the opposite direction. When U.S. sanctions were reimposed beginning in 2018, the World Bank documented falling Iranian oil output and exports, shrinking investment, higher inflation and severe economic contraction. In the first nine months of Iran’s 2019/20 fiscal year, GDP contracted 7.6 percent and the oil sector fell 37 percent. The more accurate question is therefore not whether sanctions make Iran richer, but whether sanctions can make certain people inside Iran richer.
From a Transaction to an Industry
In Soltani’s description, ordinary oil commerce has identifiable responsibilities. Someone produces the oil, a recognized organization markets it, a buyer purchases it, banks guarantee or process payment, money returns to an identifiable government account, and auditors can determine whether the transaction was completed. If the money fails to arrive, responsibility can be traced. Soltani says Iran’s sanctions-era structure has increasingly departed from that model, with the sale involving private traders, financial intermediaries, indirect banking arrangements, repeated conversions and organizations connected to security structures. He repeatedly returns to four questions: who sold the oil, who bought it, how the money was supposed to return, and who is responsible if it did not return.
Those questions sound simple, but that simplicity is exactly why they matter. If a government sells a billion dollars of oil and the public cannot determine who received it, what price was paid, where the payment traveled or who is liable when the money disappears, complexity has stopped being merely an operational requirement and has become an accountability problem. Under sanctions, however, complexity has economic value because every obstacle creates another service, every service creates another fee, and every fee creates someone whose income exists because the obstacle exists.
A trader gets paid because Iran cannot easily sell directly. A financial intermediary gets paid because Iran cannot easily receive money directly. A bank willing to handle a risky transaction charges more because ordinary banks will not touch it. Currency may move from yuan to dirhams, from dirhams somewhere else and eventually into a form Iran can use. Shipping becomes more expensive, insurance becomes more difficult, and money may remain outside Iran for weeks or months. Soltani describes trustees charging for transfers, banks charging additional fees, currency-conversion costs, money remaining parked in accounts and repeated transfers creating further expenses. He estimates that the cumulative cost around some oil transactions can reach several percent of the cargo’s value.
At that point sanctions stop being merely foreign policy and begin becoming an economic ecosystem.
The Tollbooth Economy
Imagine a highway that once allowed direct travel between Point A and Point B, but the highway is suddenly closed. A new route appears through mountains, side roads and private checkpoints. One person knows the road, another owns the truck, another controls the checkpoint, another exchanges the currency, another guarantees passage, another knows the border official, and another can get the money back home.
The closed highway is disastrous for ordinary commerce, but it is extremely profitable for the tollbooths. The economic incentives of the traveler and the tollbooth owner are now opposite. The traveler wants the highway reopened because the normal road is faster and cheaper, while the tollbooth owner earns money precisely because the normal road remains closed.
That does not prove the tollbooth owner originally closed the highway, does not prove the tollbooth owner controls whether it reopens, and does not prove a conspiracy between everyone operating along the alternative route. But once billions of dollars begin moving through that detour, it becomes irrational not to ask whether some participants have developed an interest in preserving the abnormal system.
That is the sanctions industry.
One Barrel, Two Completely Different Outcomes
Suppose Iran can normally sell a barrel of oil for $100. Under ordinary conditions, a recognized state seller deals with a recognized buyer, the banking transaction occurs through conventional channels, normal transportation costs are paid, and most of the economic value ultimately reaches the seller.
Now add sanctions. The same barrel may require a discount because the buyer assumes sanctions risk, transportation becomes more difficult, financial transfers become expensive, additional companies become involved, currency conversion adds another layer, intermediaries demand compensation, and money may be inaccessible for extended periods. Iran might therefore receive substantially less than the theoretical $100 value, yet several people handling that barrel may make substantially more than they ever could in ordinary commerce.
The country loses value while the network earns value. There is no contradiction between those two outcomes because they are happening to different participants inside the same transaction.
Confidentiality Is Not the Same as Irresponsibility
One of the most important passages in the interview occurs when Soltani accepts that sanctions genuinely require confidentiality. He does not argue that Iran should publish the identity of every trader, ship, bank account and sanctions-evasion route on the internet, because doing so could expose those channels to foreign enforcement and make selling oil more difficult. Instead, he makes a much more powerful argument: confidentiality does not eliminate responsibility.
A trader can be secret from Washington while still being completely known to the Iranian institution responsible for the national asset. A bank account can be hidden from sanctions enforcement while still being audited internally. A ship can operate discreetly while the government still knows exactly how much oil it carried. The public may not need to know every operational detail immediately, but somebody independent of the transaction must know who received the oil, what financial guarantees were provided, what price was obtained and whether the money came home. Soltani explicitly argues that sanctions-era traders and trustees may be necessary, but asks who qualifies them, who verifies their financial capacity and who becomes responsible when the payment does not return.
That is the line separating legitimate secrecy from a financial black box.
When Secrecy Protects the Transaction and When It Protects the Participants
There is an even stranger contradiction in the interview. According to Soltani, foreign governments and specialized commercial organizations can already obtain considerable information about Iranian oil movements through shipping intelligence and commercial databases. Tankers can be tracked, loading patterns can be analyzed, destinations can be inferred, and buyers and routes can sometimes be reconstructed.
Yet ordinary Iranians may have little ability to determine who was entrusted with their oil, what terms were negotiated or whether the proceeds were ultimately recovered. Soltani’s argument is that information may effectively be “secret” from the Iranian public even when much of the external movement is observable to sophisticated outsiders.
That raises an extraordinary question. If sanctions investigators abroad can map significant portions of the oil network, why should accountability inside Iran itself be impossible? Operational secrecy can protect a transaction from foreign enforcement, but when secrecy also prevents domestic oversight, the same shield can begin protecting participants from the people whose national wealth is being moved.
The Sanctions Premium
Sanctions effectively create something similar to a risk premium. Ordinary commercial activity becomes dangerous, danger raises the price of participation, and anyone willing to take that risk demands compensation. There is nothing inherently corrupt about that. A shipowner facing possible seizure or blacklisting will logically charge more, a bank risking exclusion from the American financial system will demand compensation, and a trader undertaking unusually complicated transactions will expect a profit.
The problem is that the legitimate sanctions premium and the corruption opportunity can occupy exactly the same space. How much additional compensation is genuinely necessary, who decides, whether competition existed, whether the trader was financially qualified, whether the discount was economically justified, whether another trader offered better terms, whether the buyer actually paid, whether the money reached the government, and whether the person selecting the trader was independent from the person benefiting from the transaction are all questions ordinary transparency helps answer.
Sanctions remove much of that transparency, and that is why secrecy can become economically valuable.
The Four Traders
Among Soltani’s most serious allegations is his claim that a small group of traders received enormous oil allocations under terms he considers questionable. He alleges that large quantities of petroleum were allocated without an ordinary tender process and discusses substantial outstanding debts associated with some traders. He then compares those terms with a later tender in which, according to his account, significantly better pricing became available.
These figures should be treated as Soltani’s allegations unless independently verified. The interview alone cannot establish that corruption occurred, why particular commercial terms were selected or whether other operational factors justified them. Yet the structural question survives even if every disputed number is removed: why should competitive processes disappear merely because the transaction is secret?
A government can conduct a confidential tender while preserving records of the bids. It can maintain confidential bidder identities while requiring collateral, auditing payments and recording responsibility. It can preserve classified shipping information while retaining commercial accountability. Secrecy and competition are not opposites, secrecy and accounting are not opposites, and secrecy and responsibility are not opposites. Only secrecy and public visibility are opposites, and confusing those concepts can create enormous opportunities for abuse.
The Money Between Departure and Arrival
Soltani also focuses on the period after the oil leaves Iran but before the money is fully recovered. According to his description, payment may take 45 to 90 days to return, and during that interval very large balances can remain under the control of intermediaries. He alleges that this creates opportunities to use the money for other transactions before eventually returning it, or failing to return all of it.
That means the intermediary may potentially benefit twice: first from the fee for moving the money and then from temporary control of the money itself. Holding money has economic value. A billion dollars sitting somewhere for sixty days is not economically equivalent to a billion dollars transferred immediately because those funds can potentially generate returns, support another transaction, collateralize another deal or finance additional business.
The critical question is therefore no longer simply whether Iran eventually gets paid. It is also who controlled the national money while Iran was waiting and what economic value was created during that waiting period.
Sanctions Create Scarcity and Scarcity Creates Gatekeepers
Whenever ordinary routes disappear, access becomes valuable. The person who knows a buyer becomes valuable, the person who can access a foreign bank becomes valuable, the person with a shipping connection becomes valuable, the person able to obtain security approval becomes valuable, and the person who can move currency becomes valuable. The person who decides which trader receives the oil becomes even more valuable because that person controls access to the entire chain.
That produces an economy of gatekeepers, and gatekeeping power can eventually become more valuable than the commodity itself. A trader does not need to own an oil field if he possesses privileged access to the oil leaving it. A financial intermediary does not need to produce anything if he has privileged access to the money returning from it. A political intermediary may not even need to participate directly in the transaction if he possesses influence over who is allowed into the room.
The sanctions economy therefore creates something ordinary commerce tries to minimize: artificial scarcity of access. Artificial scarcity creates rents, and rents attract influence, competition and political protection.
Why Would Anyone Want Sanctions to Continue?
This question has to be handled carefully because there is not sufficient evidence in this interview to conclude that Iranian officials deliberately create international confrontations in order to preserve sanctions profits. That would require evidence of intent. Soltani makes stronger political allegations in the interview, including suggestions about actors benefiting from continuing confrontation, but those claims should not simply be transformed into established fact.
The economic incentive can nevertheless be examined without claiming conspiracy. Suppose an individual earns extraordinary income because Iran cannot use ordinary international banking. If sanctions disappear, Iran reconnects to normal financial networks, state oil companies sell directly, major banks transfer the money, transparent tenders return, normal shipping companies compete for contracts and auditors can reconcile transactions. The intermediary’s special value collapses because the abnormal conditions that made him indispensable have disappeared.
That person therefore has an objective economic interest different from that of the ordinary citizen who wants lower inflation, greater trade and a healthier economy. This does not prove what that person will do, but it identifies the incentive, and incentives matter.
This Pattern Is Not Uniquely Iranian
The underlying mechanism appears elsewhere whenever government secrecy, enormous budgets and restricted competition intersect. Western countries encounter comparable risks in classified defense procurement, intelligence contracting and national-security programs. Contractors may possess specialized knowledge unavailable to the public, details may be classified, competition can be restricted and oversight can become more difficult.
The United States nevertheless maintains mechanisms such as congressional committees, inspectors general, the Government Accountability Office, courts and procurement rules. Those institutions do not eliminate corruption or waste, but they create competing centers of accountability. Iran’s sanctions situation differs because Soltani alleges that security structures have moved beyond protecting transactions and become involved in commercial decision-making itself.
That creates a particularly dangerous concentration because the institution invoking secrecy may simultaneously influence who gets access to the transaction hidden by that secrecy. There is a major difference between guarding a vault and deciding who gets the money inside it.
Washington Also Creates the Market It Is Trying to Destroy
There is another uncomfortable side of the sanctions equation. The United States spends enormous resources identifying and dismantling Iranian sanctions-evasion networks, but those networks exist because sanctions make ordinary commerce illegal or prohibitively risky. Washington creates the barrier, entrepreneurs develop ways around the barrier, Washington sanctions those entrepreneurs, and new entrepreneurs replace them.
Each layer of enforcement increases risk, and higher risk increases the potential return demanded by anyone willing to participate. That does not mean sanctions enforcement agencies and sanctions evaders are partners because they are clearly adversaries, but adversaries can still create an economic ecosystem around one another.
A cybersecurity company profits because hackers exist. A smuggler profits because borders restrict goods. A sanctions intermediary profits because financial channels are blocked. Remove the underlying obstacle and part of the surrounding industry disappears, which is one reason sanctions can continue producing unintended consequences long after their original political objective is forgotten.
Follow the Incentive, Not Merely the Ideology
Political discussions about Iran frequently begin with ideology: hardliners, reformists, America, Israel, revolution, resistance, sovereignty and security. All of those may matter, but money has its own logic. A system that creates billions of dollars in opaque transactions inevitably creates people who have something material to lose if that system disappears.
That observation does not prove why any particular political actor takes a particular foreign-policy position. It tells us where another investigative question should begin. Instead of asking only what someone says about sanctions, ask what happens economically to that person if sanctions disappear. That question may reveal incentives that political rhetoric does not.
The Sanctions Trap
Eventually the system can become self-reinforcing. Sanctions create secrecy, secrecy creates intermediaries, intermediaries create financial interests, financial interests create influence, influence can make structural reform harder, more conflict creates additional sanctions, and additional sanctions create greater complexity. Greater complexity then increases the value of the people who know how to operate inside the system.
The country can become poorer while the sanctions economy becomes more sophisticated. The failure of the normal system becomes the business opportunity of the abnormal one, and over time the abnormal arrangement can begin developing institutions, networks and interests of its own.
The Red Blood Perspective
The important question is not whether sanctions are “good” or “bad” for the Islamic Republic as though a country were a single person with a single bank account. A country contains millions of people with different economic interests, and sanctions can reduce national wealth, suppress ordinary commerce, weaken purchasing power and increase transaction costs while simultaneously concentrating extraordinary opportunities among the relatively small number of people with access to sanctioned trade.
That changes how sanctions should be examined. Follow the barrel, then follow the payment, then follow the discount, then follow the commissions, then examine who decides who receives access. Finally, ask the question that almost never appears in the political argument: who would lose money if tomorrow became normal? The answer may tell us more about the sanctions economy than another thousand speeches about resistance or pressure ever could.
Ocean of Love and Positivity Perspective
There is also a lesson beyond Iran, oil or sanctions. Human beings become vulnerable to systems whenever fear persuades them that ordinary questions should no longer be asked. Security can be necessary, confidentiality can be necessary and protection can be necessary, but none of those words should require surrendering inner judgment.
The individual can learn to separate the emotional label from the structure underneath it. Instead of automatically accepting “national security,” “resistance,” “patriotism,” “emergency” or “classified” as the end of thought, the mind can calmly ask what those words are protecting, who benefits from the arrangement, who carries the cost and whether responsibility remains identifiable.
Awareness does not require hatred of the people inside a system. It requires understanding the system clearly enough not to become captured by its language. The deeper freedom begins when the individual no longer needs someone else to decide which questions are permissible, and when inner clarity becomes stronger than the fear created by external authority.
In an Ocean of Love and Positivity. 🩸🌊✨ Fantastic!
Category: Money, Economics & Work
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The Sanctions Industry: Profit in the Shadow of Isolation
Sep 19, 2026
The provided text explores the “sanctions industry,” a phenomenon where international restrictions on Iran create a highly profitable ecosystem for certain intermediaries and gatekeepers. While sanctions damage the national economy, they foster a complex network of private traders and banks that earn massive fees by bypassing legal barriers. Investigative journalist Yashar Soltani argues that the resulting lack of transparency serves to protect these participants from domestic accountability rather than just shielding transactions from foreign eyes. This structural secrecy creates a conflict of interest, as those profiting from the “tollbooth economy” may have a financial incentive to see sanctions continue. Ultimately, the text highlights how artificial scarcity and gatekeeping allow small networks to capture national wealth while the broader public suffers the economic consequences. Such a system becomes self-reinforcing, turning political isolation into a lucrative business model for a select few.