US Treasury Says Iran’s Oil Revenue, Trade Hit Hard by Pressure Campaign
On Monday, October 26, Hossein Ghorbanzadeh, a board member of Persian Gulf Petrochemical Company and a figure close to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told Fars News Agency that the dismissal of Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad, who left office three weeks earlier, had originally been planned for March.
He said Masoud Pezeshkian had told a cabinet meeting that Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s then-leader, had asked him to dismiss the oil minister over his inability to manage the crisis involving the trustees. However, Khamenei’s killing and the outbreak of the 40-day war delayed the change.
Shamkhani’s secret letter to Khamenei
But according to a document reviewed by Iran International, it was Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s political adviser, who asked him in a confidential letter to dismiss the oil minister.
In a confidential report submitted to Khamenei in late 2025, Shamkhani wrote that Pezeshkian’s government was selling oil at a discount of $6 a barrel, compared with a discount of 50 cents under Ebrahim Raisi’s government.
Khamenei’s political adviser claimed that oil sales under the current government were far below production levels and that the Oil Ministry had stopped accepting gold in exchange for oil.
A source familiar with the matter at the Oil Ministry and another at an oversight body told Iran International that the main reason for Shamkhani’s anger with the ministry was the exclusion of Hossein Shamkhani, owner of a 51-vessel “ghost fleet” used to circumvent sanctions, from sanctioned oil sales.
How the Trustee Network Took Shape
Beginning in 2018, following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose a policy of maximum pressure, the Islamic Republic entrusted sanctioned oil sales to the Supreme National Security Council’s so-called “Cover Committee,” which operated under Ali Shamkhani’s supervision. The justification was to prevent the emergence of major debtors such as Babak Zanjani.
Representatives of the IRGC Intelligence Organization were supposed to work alongside Intelligence Ministry representatives on the committee to prevent corruption in sanctioned oil sales. The committee decided which oil shipments would be entrusted to the government’s trusted oil brokers, known as trustees.
The key decision-makers were Shamkhani and Mohammad Javad Bavand, the IRGC Intelligence Organization’s representative on the committee. Bavand served as deputy head of the organization’s economic directorate under Mostafa Ahadi, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Their decisions made Hossein Shamkhani one of the main trustees handling Iranian oil sales, among intermediaries who failed to return hundreds of millions of dollars in oil proceeds.
IRGC Intelligence Moves Against the New
After Masoud Pezeshkian won the election in 2024, Bavand was removed, and the oil minister handed oil sales to another security network: an Intelligence Ministry corruption network headed by a man known as Shayan, the ministry’s former director general for petroleum products.
According to a source familiar with the matter at the Oil Ministry and another at an oversight body told Iran International that the main reason for Shamkhani’s anger with the ministry was the exclusion of Hossein Shamkhani, owner of a 51-vessel “ghost fleet” used to circumvent sanctions, from sanctioned oil sales.
In an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency, Ali Akbar Pour-Ebrahim confirmed that trustees had failed to return $11 billion in oil revenues during this period.
Original Article: US Treasury says Iran’s oil revenue, trade hit hard by pressure campaign — Iranintl