Iran's oil minister Mohsen Paknejad disclosed $11.5 billion in oil sales between 28 February and 7 April and $6.5 billion between 7 April and 10 July, in remarks Reuters reported on 25 July1. The combined $18 billion amounts to more than 60% of the oil revenue Iran budgeted for the year, earned across the war's first phase and the ceasefire that followed it.
Both periods close before the fighting resumed on 8 July. Neither says anything about what Iran has sold since the blockade came back into force, and Reuters could attribute no comparable figure to the weeks since; Shana, the oil ministry's own news agency, could not be reached. Any reading of these numbers as Iran shrugging off the present campaign is a reading the numbers do not support.
What they do support cuts against the framing much of the coverage of this war, including ours, has carried. Sanctions, a revoked oil waiver and five months of bombardment did not collapse Iranian oil income across the periods disclosed. That sat alongside genuine domestic damage over the same months, with the free-market rial passing 189,450 toman to the dollar: a state earning hard currency abroad while its citizens' savings evaporated at home.
Selective disclosure of a lagging favourable figure is a communications choice, not a transparency one. Iran ran a comparable pattern through the 1980s Tanker War, publishing aggregate trade totals that survived sanctions while staying silent on the shipment-level detail that would have let outsiders calculate throughput in real time. The number that matters now is the one no Iranian ministry or state outlet has released: sales made since 8 July, with the blockade back in force and Hormuz traffic collapsed. Until that figure appears, whether the blockade is working remains an open question rather than an answered one.
