Iran has made $44.7 billion in illegal oil sales since US President Joe Biden assumed office, selling its oil mainly to dictatorships like China, Syria and Venezuela, watchdog group United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) said in a report.
Iran’s illegal selling of sanctioned oil has skyrocketed under the Biden presidency. From January 2021 until June 2022, Iran sold $44.7 billion mostly to China, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Tehran’s energy exports "totaled $39 billion, compared [with] $22 billion for the previous year – a rise of 77 percent and an extra $17 billion," said UANI, which monitors Iran’s fleet of illegal oil tankers.
"This drastic increase in revenue is not surprising when you look at the increase in oil exports that have occurred under the Biden administration," UANI chief of staff Claire Jungman told the news outlet. "This is the result of terminally lax sanctions enforcement."
If the White House lifts sanctions on Iran in a renewed nuclear deal, the energy trade between Iran and China could surge to $60 billion per year, Gabriel Noronha, a State Department adviser for Iran during the Trump administration, predicted.
"China made a mockery of the credibility of our sanctions programs and emboldened rogue actors across the world to follow suit," Noronha told the Free Beacon.