Iran Earns Nearly Double From Oil During War As Strikes Fail To Halt Energy Exports And Global Prices Rise

While the United States and Israel have struck Iranian military targets, their failure to halt Tehran's oil exports has handed Iran a windfall: the country is now earning nearly twice what it made each day from oil before the war began.

According to a report by The Economist published on 29 March 2026, Iran is earning close to double its pre-war daily oil revenue, as a surge in global crude prices has inflated the value of every barrel Tehran ships. Kharg Island, the small Persian Gulf outpost that handles around 90% of Iran's crude exports, has remained largely operational, with Kpler shipping data showing very large crude carriers continuing to load at the terminal through the first weeks of the conflict.

The war's most painful economic consequences have fallen on Iran's Gulf rivals, whose exports have been strangled by the very disruptions Tehran engineered.

How Iran Kept Exporting While the Strait Closed Around It

Iran imposed a near-total blockade on commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products flow on a typical day, while quietly maintaining its own tanker traffic. CNN reported on 16 March 2026 that Iran was shipping oil through the strait in almost the same volumes as before the conflict, effectively exploiting its own closure to lock out competitors while keeping its own revenues intact.

Tehran prepared for the disruption. According to Windward shipping intelligence cited by CNN, the average daily volume leaving Kharg Island in February 2026 reached 2.04 million barrels, roughly a quarter higher than the previous year's average.

JPMorgan analysts found that Iran increased exports from Kharg to near-record levels in the days before the escalation, with shipments between 15 and 20 February reportedly exceeding three million barrels per day.

Iran has also, according to Al Mayadeen's summary of The Economist report, been exporting between 2.4 and 2.8 million barrels per day during the conflict, including 1.5 to 1.8 million barrels of crude, with China absorbing over 90% of those volumes. Crucially, oil that Iran once had to sell at a substantial discount to Brent crude is now trading at near-Brent prices, as global supply tightness has eliminated buyers' bargaining power.

Kharg Island: Operational Despite Strikes, Untouched Oil Infrastructure

Kharg Island sits roughly 25 kilometres off Iran's coast in the northern Persian Gulf and handles around 94% of Iran's seaborne crude exports, according to Kpler's 12-month tracking data. Its deep-water berths can accommodate the world's largest crude carriers, very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, a capability most of Iran's coastline does not offer.

The island's terminals have a loading capacity of roughly 1.3 to 1.6 million barrels per day, and its storage infrastructure, according to Kpler, held around 18 million barrels as of early March, giving Iran a buffer to smooth exports during periods of disruption.

On 13 March, US President Donald Trump announced via social media that American forces had struck military targets on the island, but had deliberately spared the oil infrastructure. In a subsequent Oval Office statement, Trump said the US military 'took out every single thing in Kharg Island, except one thing. We left the pipes.' He followed that statement with a threat to reconsider that restraint if Iran continued to obstruct shipping in the strait.

In the first two weeks of March, Kpler data recorded at least eight crude loadings at Kharg totalling nearly 14 million barrels, including cargoes loaded on 11 March, just two days before Trump's post. Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury sanctions official and senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told TIME that Kharg generates £61 billion ($78 billion) a year in energy revenue, with irreplaceable deep-water berths no other Iranian port can replicate.

A Price Shock That Enriches the Sanctioned While Punishing the Global Economy

The war has produced an extraordinary inversion: the country under military attack is profiting from the crisis it helped engineer, while the countries aligned against it absorb rising costs. Brent crude surged from roughly £50 ($65) per barrel before the conflict began to above £79 ($100) within weeks, and briefly reached £94 ($120) as markets priced in the risk of sustained disruption. That price trajectory directly multiplied Iran's per-barrel revenue.

The International Energy Agency has described the disruption as the 'largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.' Gulf producers including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE have been forced to suspend or severely curtail exports, as tankers will not transit a strait where Iran has struck more than a dozen commercial vessels since hostilities began. CSIS estimated that bypass pipeline capacity from Saudi Arabia and the UAE can redirect only about 3 million barrels per day, leaving roughly 85% of normal Gulf export volumes stranded.

The World Economic Forum described the strategic logic plainly: Iran, unable to match the US and Israel militarily, is raising the cost of escalation by targeting energy, shipping, and civilian infrastructure across the Gulf. Chatham House analysts note that when energy prices rise, income transfers from importing to exporting nations. Iran, with its exports intact and prices at multi-year highs, sits firmly on the winning side of that transfer.

Every day the war continues without a strike on Kharg Island's oil infrastructure, Iran converts its adversaries' military campaign into a windfall that funds the very war being fought against it.

Originally published on IBTimes UK