Rising oil gains, resistance: 2 months into the war, why Iran may be an unlikely winner

On top of this, Iranians are now earning twice as much from their oil as they were before the war. This is not just because oil prices have almost doubled, but with a new revenue stream by way of a toll levied on vessels in lieu of their safely transiting the strait.

Ironically, into the third week of the war, the US was forced to temporarily suspend its long-standing sanctions on Iranian crude. The new waiver, meant for Iranian crude already loaded on tankers, was offered by the Americans to allow as much oil as possible to flow into the international market to improve the global oil supply amid spiralling crude oil prices.

This came days after the US was forced to announce yet another rollback — a month-long universal waiver on sanctioned Russian crude already on tankers in water. The reversal comes months after the Trump administration threatened countries such as India with tariffs to stop buying Russian crude.

Another political problem for Trump, with midterm elections less than eight months away, is the $4-plus per gallon price of petrol — crossing a psychological barrier in many US states and even inching towards the $5 mark. Add to that the inflationary impact of high oil prices.

The Iranian regime endures

Now, as the war enters the second month, and after all the devastation across its key cities, Iran is digging in its heels. Many of its leaders may have been killed, but the clerical-military regime is still firmly in place. Tehran is also pretty much holding hostage the Gulf states — all American allies — in the region.

On the nuclear front, too, the US has tied itself in knots of its own making. After its forces (and those of Israel) bombed Iran last June, Trump had repeatedly declared that he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear programme. Eight months on, his administration has had to admit that the Iranian nuclear programme posed such an imminent threat to the US that Trump had to act without seeking authorisation from the US Congress.

Meanwhile, the financial drain from the war is showing. The White House has approached Congress to hike the US defence budget to $1.5 trillion, a huge increase that could potentially mark the largest expansion in American military spending since the Second World War. This funding request is distinct from the $200 billion that the Pentagon sought specifically for continuing the fighting in Iran.

US-Israel divergences

What is also becoming clearer is the growing divergence between the two key perpetrators of this war. For Israel, the war is clearly about destroying the Islamic Republic and in that objective, the Israeli military strategy has been aligned to that goal.

The Israeli strikes have wiped out Iran’s leadership, destroying its military forces and even hitting police facilities to potentially ensure the breakdown of law and order. The US has, meanwhile, changed its operational objectives throughout the past month, in a trend that American policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour termed an “improvisational jazz session, riffing on different strategies and endgames.”

What is interesting, though, is that Iran’s military resistance in a war where it is single-handedly fighting eight countries — including two military superpowers — is getting stronger even as its key cities and missile launching sites have been flattened out. In its oil revenues, Iran’s funding mechanism for the war effort is also getting stronger.

The winners and losers

At this point, Iran, while having restricted the passage of ships, is reportedly allowing ships to squeeze through a tiny waterway closer to that country’s coastline in lieu of, according to a shipping intelligence firm, the payment of a toll. This toll is said to have been around $2 million. With the US looking the other way on the question of safeguarding the strait, there is a chance that the little detour could potentially continue for some time even after hostilities cease.

Given that in a typical year, the number of tankers that transit the Strait of Hormuz is around 50,000, the $2 million dollar toll for each ship means a neat $100 billion of new revenues for Iran. That’s over a fourth of Iran’s GDP last year. Given that a Very Large Crude Carrier can carry the equivalent of about 2 million barrels of oil, the $2 million toll works out to about $1 a barrel for oil, which is currently retailing for around $100 a barrel and where demand is likely to outstrip supply well into the near future.

The idea of the toll itself is illegal under international law, because the United Nations considers the Strait of Hormuz an international strait open to all traffic. But Iran is likely to see this as a short-term revenue measure, even if a sanctions waiver is on the table. The devastation from the war could mean a massive rebuilding exercise, which would have to be funded in some manner.

Another big unlikely winner, meanwhile, seems to be Russia, which is seeing increased prices and markets for its energy products, with Washington DC now actively facilitating the sale of its oil. Also, given that European and American attention is now diverted away from Ukraine, this is a net positive for the Russians.

The other winner could be China, which is sitting pretty, watching the Americans flounder in the conflict, as they shift forces away from the Indo-Pacific into the struggling West Asian war effort. This is already beginning to unsettle American allies in the region, including Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.