๐ธ"There's only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, predicting Iran will make its final deliveries to China "probably within the next two weeks" and then "have nothing left to trade for anything."
โช๏ธHis figure tracks with ship-tracking data. Iranian crude on tankers outside the US blockade fell from about 90 million barrels in mid-July to roughly 29 million by early September, Kpler data cited by the Wall Street Journal showed.
โช๏ธWith about 1 million barrels a day still reaching buyers, mostly in China, Kpler projected the stockpile could run out by mid-October, and payments could dry up by mid-December. No seaborne Iranian crude cargo has crossed the blockade since it was reimposed July 14, according to trackers and U.S. authorities.
๐ธOil already sold is also hard to cash in. "One of the problems that we face is that our money in China is blocked," Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Fox News this past weekend.
โช๏ธAsked about Iran funding allies in the region, Pezeshkian said: "We can't even get our own money out of a country to which we have supplied goods, let alone use those funds to pay someone else in another corner of the world."