The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 affected mostly the country’s banking and oil sectors. The US wanted to zero Iran’s oil export along with restricting access to export revenues. Although the oil export never declined to zero percent, the Iranian authorities faced mounting pressure when it came to selling and shipping oil.
Therefore, Tehran tried to make up for the lost foreign exchange earnings through exporting petrochemical and petroleum products, which was a successful plan.
A recent report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Parliament shows that the all-out economic war dropped around 98.6 billion dollars of oil revenues in the mentioned period.
The so-called maximum pressure was biting the Iranian economy and the country had no access to its oil revenues at banks of other countries, including South Korea and Iraq; so, Iran was under mounting pressure when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted and the country could not purchase medical equipment and medicines.
The corona pandemic, loss of oil revenues around 91 percent as well as unstable world economic situation added up to the woes of lacking oil revenues and the Iranian oil revenues reached their lowest during the last 20 years in 2020.
Moreover, the oil price fell below 20 dollars per barrel in spring 2020 and it could not hit the record of over 70 dollars per barrel by the same year’s end.
The decrease of oil revenues caused a -7.4% decline in economic growth in the first quarter of 2019, but Iran could increase the economic growth in 2020 and experience a 2.5% increase excluding oil revenues.
The Islamic Republic could upgrade its economic growth in the last year when other countries witnessed a downgrade of economic growth. The world economic growth stood at -4% in 2020.
Iran exported oil products, including gasoline, not only to the West Asia region but also throughout the world and especially in South America.
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