Are Iranian Sanctions Working? Iran’s Technical & Engineering Service Exports Rose 400% In 2021

Iran has adapted in three years to SWIFT disconnection and forged ahead with new trade and cooperation agreements. Is this the way ahead for Russia?

Like Russia today, Iran was cut off from the SWIFT banking network in 2019 and has been under intense sanctions from the United States, eager to punish anyone who trades with what is considered a rogue state in Washington. It is not co-incidental that Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil supplier and competed with the US on global energy markets, especially with supplies to the European Union. Comparisons with the US involvement in stopping the Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe are apt.

However, despite heavy sanctions, the head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization Alireza Peyman-Pak, has predicted Iran’s exports of technical and engineering services will reach US$4 billion in 2022, according to the Fars News Agency.

Peyman-Pak also stated that the export of technical and engineering services in 2021 reached 18 countries, and grew by 400%, reaching US$2.3 billion. Iran reached a 25 year trade agreement with China twelve months ago, and followed that up with a similar, 20 year agreement with Russia last December. It also signed a Free Trade Agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union, suggesting that sanctions placed on it by the United States have merely moved the Iranian economy towards Central Asia and the East. The question therefore remains: how effective in the longer term are sanctions, especially when, like Russia, Iran is in possession of significant global energy reserves and can adapt to new geopolitical realities with China, India, and Russia now among its highest trade partners? What then, are the implications for Europe with two major global energy suppliers turned away from servicing it by US sanctions ?

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