The shadow war: Confronting Iran’s playbook

TEHRAN’S ART OF THE DEAL: A SLOW CREEP, AND BEFORE YOU NOTICE, IT’S TOO LATE With extraction costs often in the range of $8 to $10 per barrel, Iran possesses one of the lowest-cost production profiles in the world. That margin creates enormous flexibility. Even under sanctions, discounted or “black” oil can be sold profitably through shell companies, blended cargoes, and falsified shipping documentation. This is systematic. Oil revenues are diverted into opaque channels that fund proxy militias, weapons procurement, and covert operations across a fluid geographic arc stretching from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. And this is…