Iran Scrambles for Trade Lifelines as US Threatens Sanctions on Third Countries

Iran is scrambling to sustain even limited international trade as a widening US sanctions regime and de facto trade embargo leave Tehran with few reliable partners, the Associated Press reported. Washington has signalled it is prepared to impose secondary sanctions on countries that refuse to sever economic ties with the Islamic Republic, narrowing the field of governments and firms willing to do business with Tehran despite the commercial cost.

The pressure comes against a backdrop of the US war with Iran, now in its sixth month, and an oil-price shock that has fed through into global inflation and central-bank decision-making. Iran's traditional commercial partners in the Gulf — including the United Arab Emirates, which saw strikes on Sharjah industrial areas earlier this year — have become riskier conduits for trade, AP noted. The article's reporting referenced shipping and port options including Pakistan's Gwadar and Oman's Muscat, two venues that have occasionally handled Iranian-linked cargoes in the past.

Tehran has also looked east and north for survival, with the Russian partnership — cemented during Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's 2022 meeting with President Vladimir Putin — among the few remaining diplomatic and economic anchors. Inside Iran, traders in the Tehran bazaar say costs of imported staples have risen sharply since the conflict began, and ordinary Iranians are bearing the brunt of a contracting economy, AP reported. The squeeze has knock-on effects for global commodity markets: with Iranian crude exports curtailed, benchmark oil prices have stayed elevated, contributing to the bond-market stress that prompted an unusual US Treasury bond-buyback intervention this week and a climb in the average US 30-year mortgage rate to 6.66%. Analysts say the longer Iran's trade channels remain choked, the more durable the inflationary impact on energy-importing economies from Europe to South Asia is likely to be.

**Sources:** Associated Press