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Home Energy Crude Oil Tsvetana Paraskova What I Cover Tsvetana Paraskova is an energy and commodities journalist who has contributed to Oilprice.com for nearly a decade, covering global energy markets, commodities. Iran’s oil exports have effectively collapsed under the renewed U.S. blockade, with August loadings down roughly 80% year-on-year and some trackers estimating zero exports escaped the Persian Gulf. Other Gulf producers have restored flows to around two-thirds of pre-war levels, increasingly using dark transits, shuttle tankers, and ship-to-ship transfers to circumvent Hormuz disruption.
Iran remains defiant despite mounting economic pressure, while continued Hormuz disruption and regional escalation are pushing oil toward $100 and U.S. fuel prices to record levels. More than six months after the U.S.-Iran war began, shipping traffic at the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, and oil prices are once again closing in on the $100 per barrel mark. The U.S. and Iran remain deadlocked at the start of the seventh month of the conflict.
The U.S. blockade, reinstated in the middle of July after only three weeks of reprieve, is cutting off Iran’s oil exports and oil revenues. The volumes Iran managed to move through Hormuz during the three-week window in June and early July are rapidly dwindling from floating storage, while no Iranian vessel has managed to sneak past the blockade since the middle of July. Publicly, Iran remains defiant and claims it will find ways to dodge the U.S. blockade.
Publicly, Iran remains defiant and claims it will find ways to dodge the U.S. blockade. Publicly, Iran remains defiant and claims it will find ways to dodge the U.S. blockade. Iran managed to load around 260,000 barrels per day (bpd) for export at its ports in August, an 80% slump compared to 1.7 million bpd loaded in August 2025, per data from trade intelligence firm Kpler cited by CNBC.
The August loadings were also more than halved compared to about 740,000 bpd in July 2026. The loadings, however, do not mean that cargoes moved past the U.S. blockade. Various estimates put Iranian oil flows out of the Persian Gulf at zero last month.
Kpler and other ship-tracking services, including Vortexa and TankerTrackers.com, say the reinstated blockade has been very effective in crippling Iranian oil exports and oil revenues. TankerTrackers.com last week said that its estimates showed that Iran's oil exports plunged by 100% in August 2026 compared to the immediate pre-war baseline of January and February 2026. Economic Pain: This is the greatest economic isolation operation in the history of the world.
We are going to asphyxiate this regime,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News this weekend. The combination of the blockade and the U.S. sanctions is “one of the most powerful one-two punches in the history of economic isolation,” the official added.
Despite the economic pain, Iran publicly remains defiant and vows retaliation for every U.S. strike. Many analysts doubt the regime will capitulate. “The Iranians have consistently surprised us in terms of their resiliency,” Dennis Ross, a former U.S. negotiator, told Reuters.
Following the weekend U.S. attacks on Iranian tankers, Mohsen Rezaei, who led the IRGC during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War and is now the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said, “In recent days, Washington has received a clear warning from Iran’s new missiles. Economic warfare will be met by a maritime exclusion zone across the Persian Gulf to the blockade perimeter. The operational posture toward U.S. warships and bases has been fundamentally recalibrated.” There is little sign that Iran would yield to the intensified economic pressure, Gulf officials told the Wall Street Journal this week.
Iran has also moved to provide more weapons and intelligence support to its allies, the Houthis in Yemen, who have targeted Saudi shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Saudi officials told the Journal. The economic consequences of the Hormuz disruption are evident in the U.S. fuel prices—diesel just hit a record-high while gasoline prices at over $4 per gallon on average were the highest-ever for a Labor Day weekend in nominal terms. The U.S.
Administration seeks to play down the price spike and the record fuel prices two months before the midterms, saying that it’s just temporary and worth the cause of never letting Iran have a nuclear weapon. After the U.S. wins the war, prices will plummet; this is Washington’s narrative. Iran is publicly defiant, but the economic pain is worsening as its oil revenues crash.
‘Now, much will depend on the degree of economic pain that the Iranian regime is willing to bear to achieve its military and geopolitical objectives,’ Hamad Hussain, an economist at Capital Economics, told the Journal.
