India buys 12 percent of its oil from Iran and many of India’s refineries have been built to run on Iranian crude. India pays 45 percent of their imports in Indian rupees — thus avoiding the need to pay in dollars — and might even settle the remainder of the debts through barter
I wonder if India is paying full market price for that oil?
China, Japan and South Korea are big consumers of Iranian oil.
It looks like our plan to hurt Iran will backfire and will be another nail in the dollar’s coffin.
So much for yet another of our so-called “friends”. No wonder Iran laughs at sanctions.
Sanctions will make & have made things difficult by presenting obstacles, but not enough to bring down the regime or stop its nuclear program; if that’s the intention. They might long-term, who knows... but I doubt it.
Iran’s economy has its problem, some more serious than others. Sanctions have naturally limited direct foreign investment in Iran too & there is the usual widespread corruption.
However, the main problems for the average Iranian are unemployment & inflation. Reasons why those Iranians who can are looking elsewhere, especially in central Asia/Asia & the Gulf states such as Oman, UAE, Qatar, etc.. For example, I recently read somewhere that about 20% (perhaps slightly more) of Dubai-UAE’s domestic economy is run by Iranian expats.
Also, Iran has made the development of non-oil exports a priority, and the bonyads (religious foundations) control around 20 to 25% of Iran’s GDP, and contribute to more than 30% of regime’s spending.
In addition to India & China, Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan, S. Africa, Cuba, and Turkey are some of the other major trading partners. Obviously sanctions don’t only affect Iran. This is a customer-supplier relationship, so others as well as Iran will find ways to continue to trade.