Iran’s soft underbelly ahead of the round of talks with the US: the sale of oil

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, admittedly stated last weekend that the fall of the Ayatollah regime in Iran is “the best thing that could happen”, but on the ground he is sticking to the diplomatic channel: this week Washington will – once again – send a delegation to Geneva for the nuclear talks. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, even revealed in the newspaper “Bloomberg” that Trump is ready for a direct meeting with the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei.

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The reality shows that although the country’s nuclear facilities were attacked in the “Midnight Hammer” operation, it was carried out in the face of a fait accompli: at the time of the attack, Iran already possessed about 450 kg of uranium enriched to 60% – an amount that puts it within touching distance of actual military capability.

Iran, for its part, comes to the table in a serious economic situation, part of which is caused by the economic sanctions of the West. Kepler company data shows that the loading of crude oil at Iranian terminals decreased in January to approximately 1.39 million barrels per day, a 26% decrease on the annual level. The trend is influenced by what is happening in the main customer of the Ayatollah regime, China, where Iranian oil discharges amounted to approximately 1.13 million barrels per day, after 1.4 million barrels per day in 2025.

Another issue that erodes the profitability of Iranian oil is the increase in storage in tanks at sea to the extent of about 170 million barrels – three times within a year due to the lack of customers. So according to Kepler monitoring. which is estimated at about 100 thousand dollars per tank, which erodes the income even more.

Ten bombs and a question mark

Yikki Dayan, former consul of Israel in Los Angeles, points out that Trump is perhaps the only person in the world who believes that an agreement can be reached with Iran – which pushes him to exhaust the negotiations. “In the shadow of moving the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, the president believes that the Iranians will break and there will be an agreement,” says Dayan.

“This week will reach the ‘all-out’ stage. Right now it is clear that the Iranian maximum is far from Trump’s minimum, and the question is what will they come to the table with: will they agree to zero enrichment or to the removal of the enriched uranium to 60%? Trump has a month to gather forces and wait for the weather to improve, while hoping for contacts to be exhausted.”

Nuclear experts emphasize that the transition from 60% enrichment to 90% is not a complex scientific hurdle. Considering that the production of a bomb requires about 42 kg of highly enriched uranium, the stockpile that Iran has accumulated – if the enrichment process is completed – could be sufficient for the production of about ten nuclear bombs.

The American attack last June did damage the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic, but did not completely cut it off from its capabilities. For Tehran, the nuclear is a significant economic engine, despite the large investment it requires. According to data presented by Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, the power plant in Bushehr – whose construction cost about 1.8 billion dollars – supplied over a decade about 70 billion kilowatt hours. According to him, energy production on a similar scale using fossil fuels would have cost the country about 8 billion dollars – four times the cost of building the reactor.

The crossroads of Iran

The billion-dollar question remains: is Tehran striving for a real agreement, or is it a strategic “wasting time” as Israel claims? On the one hand, the Iranians have a tremendous economic incentive: after the 2017 agreement, trade with the European Union jumped 180% to $20.6 billion – a growth that was cut off once Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018. On the other hand, the latest rounds of negotiations have proven that the regime is ready to suffer a fatal economic blow for the pursuit of nuclear status at any cost.

Washington may put on the table a proposal to limit uranium enrichment in Iran to a level of 3.67% at most, or alternatively – a complete freeze of the program for several years. If the Americans persist in their refusal to continue enrichment on Iranian soil, the solution that may please both sides is the Emirati “golden model”. In this model, the country completely gives up the ability to enrich uranium independently on its territory. Today, four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates are already connected to the electricity grid, operating on the basis of enriched uranium imported from Australia.