Iran Wants to Extend Enforcement Mechanism to Its Oil-Loading Terminals as the Costs of War Hit Home

Summary: Tehran is threatening to establish a new exclusion zone around export routes, claims it is still selling up to 1.5 million barrels a day, and is preparing for another confrontation with the West in Vienna. Meanwhile, the price of gasoline purchased with station cards is doubling, the dollar remains above 220,000 tomans, and even the parliament speaker warns that the anti-infiltration law could “lock down the country”.

Tehran Wants to Extend Hormuz Beyond the Strait

There had been no reports of a new American strike inside Iran or another Iranian barrage. This time, the main development came in the form of a policy declaration: Tehran wants to extend its enforcement mechanism beyond the Strait of Hormuz to include the area between the American blockade line and Iran’s oil-loading terminals.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, announced on the evening of September 6 that “in the coming days, we will announce a new exclusion zone” in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. According to his description, any vessel traveling on either side of Hormuz toward the strait without coordinating its passage with Iran could be placed on an Iranian sanctions list. Rezaei threatened that being listed would affect the vessel’s insurance and its ability to transit the area in the future.

At this stage, this is a broad declaration, not an order that can be entered into a navigation system. Iran has not published a map, coordinates, an effective date, or a legal definition of the vessels to which the prohibition would apply. Nor is it clear how it intends to distinguish between a neutral tanker, a vessel inspected by the Americans, and a ship actively participating in the blockade.

Rezaei claimed that “the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed” and that American reports of ships and tankers passing through it are false. In the same breath, he acknowledged that some vessels are attempting to pass through the Omani route with their transponders switched off. According to him, Iran does not currently intend to sink the vessels because of the risk that an oil spill would cause environmental damage.

The attempt to establish an Iranian sanctions list is an interesting development. For years, Tehran has contended with the American sanctions system, under which shipping companies, insurers, and banks have been forced to choose between doing business with Iran and retaining access to the American market. It is now trying to build a reverse mechanism: a vessel that complies with Washington could lose the ability to transit Hormuz safely.

Iran’s enforcement capabilities are far from absolute. The United States operates more than 20 warships in the area, and according to Central Command, it has already redirected 92 commercial vessels to other routes, disabled three, and inspected two. These figures show that the blockade is not limited to escorting convoys through the strait, but also includes an effort to directly disrupt Iranian oil exports.

Rezaei also said that Iran and Oman had agreed on a new shipping corridor that would be managed by Iran and announced soon. Oman has yet to issue a corresponding statement, and no map of the corridor has been presented. In the meantime, shipping companies will have to continue navigating between Iranian declarations, American directives, and the genuine risk of being struck.

Iran Admits It Is Using Force, but Rejects Responsibility for the Crisis

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei presented the Iranian account of the shipping paralysis. According to him, the strait was completely open until February 28, the day the United States and Israel launched their attack on Iran. Since then, he wrote, tankers have been halted, trade has been disrupted, and energy prices have risen.

“The United States started the war, but expects the entire world to pay its price,” Baghaei wrote. He accused Washington of trying to portray Iran as responsible for chaos that it had itself created.

Iran does not deny that it fires on vessels, threatens tankers, or demands advance coordination. Its argument is that all these actions came in response to the war and the blockade, and that responsibility for the consequences therefore remains with those who initiated the confrontation.

The United States presents precisely the same sequence in reverse. From its perspective, the blockade and attacks on tankers are a response to Iranian attacks on shipping and launches targeting American forces. Both accounts acknowledge most of the events, but each begins the timeline at the point that absolves it of responsibility.

The dispute also continues over the Revolutionary Guards’ claim that they struck an American unmanned vessel. Iran announced that it had hit a vessel that, according to Tehran, attempted to enter a protected area in the strait. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said the claim was false. No visual evidence capable of resolving the conflicting accounts has been released.

The Joint Maritime Information Center described a situation in early September in which neither side had full control. The threat level in the strait remained severe, and the center assessed that deliberate hostile action was highly likely. Ships receive Iranian radio instructions to travel along the northern route while simultaneously being subjected to American inspections and enforcement near Iranian ports. Shipping companies are forced to contend with two competing systems of coercion, with compliance with one potentially making them a target of the other.

Tehran Promises the Oil Is Still Flowing

Rezaei claimed that Iran is selling between one million and 1.5 million barrels of oil per day and receiving payment for them. “Iran’s oil trade continues as before and there is no problem whatsoever in this area”, he said. SHANA, the Oil Ministry’s information network, published his remarks under the headline “Iranian oil exports continue without interruption”.

According to Rezaei, during the period of relief that followed the Islamabad memorandum, Iran managed to move between 70 million and 80 million barrels that had previously accumulated out of the export area. With these figures, he sought to refute two claims: that the American blockade had halted oil sales and that Iran was facing a shortage of foreign currency.

The report does not include customs data, buyers’ names, delivery locations, or documents showing that payment was received. Iran may be continuing to sell through floating storage, tanker identity changes, ship-to-ship transfers, and indirect routes. These methods are well known from the years in which it sought to circumvent sanctions, but they are also expensive, slow, and dependent on companies willing to take the risk.

The figure of one million to 1.5 million barrels a day is aimed first and foremost at the domestic audience. After the United States attacked three Iranian tankers on September 5, Tehran needs to demonstrate that its primary source of foreign currency has not been shut down. At this stage, it is offering a statement from a senior political official, not an accounting picture of oil exports.

The Nuclear File Returns to Vienna, but No One Knows What Remains in the Stockpile

The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to open its meeting in Vienna today. The United States, Britain, France, and Germany are promoting a draft resolution that would refer Iran’s failure to comply with its inspection obligations to the UN Security Council. At the time this review was written, the meeting had not yet begun and the draft had not been put to a vote.

Referral to the Security Council does not automatically impose new sanctions. Russia and China can block conventional punitive measures, but the move would take the dispute out of the agency’s technical framework and return it to the UN’s highest political arena. The draft focuses on the lack of transparency regarding nuclear materials and activities and on the failure to provide inspectors with access following the strikes on nuclear sites in June 2025.

ISNA chose to frame the meeting under the headline “There is no going back to the past”. Its analysis argued that the conditions created after the war differ from those under which the agency previously operated and that Iran is demanding new procedures for inspecting the damaged sites. The report acknowledges that the agency is unable to verify the status of the stockpile, but places responsibility on the attacks and the absence of a new safety and political arrangement.

The figure repeatedly cited in reports, 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, is not the result of a new inspection. It is the last estimate available to the agency before it lost continuous access to the relevant sites. There is currently no basis for determining whether the quantity has increased, been moved elsewhere, been divided, or been damaged in the strikes.

The difficulty facing any future negotiations begins even before the dispute over the number of centrifuges or the permitted enrichment level. The parties will first have to agree on what is actually on the ground. Without verified figures, it is impossible to know what Iran is supposed to transfer or dilute, or how the West could measure whether it has fulfilled its commitments.

Gasoline Gets More Expensive During the War, Not After It

Starting at midnight between September 7 and 8, the price of gasoline purchased using station cards will double from 5,000 to 10,000 tomans per liter. The two personal quotas will remain unchanged: 60 liters per month at 1,500 tomans per liter, plus another 50 liters at 3,000 tomans.

To understand who will pay, it is necessary to understand the system. Vehicles in Iran receive a personal fuel card containing the subsidized quota. Anyone who exhausts that quota, does not have a functioning card, or is forced to refuel using the station’s general card pays the third-tier rate. That is the price now being doubled.

Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani claimed that the 110 liters available under the two subsidized rates are sufficient for 85% of the public. According to her, the revenue from the price increase will be directed toward cost-of-living assistance.

She also revealed an interesting detail about how the decision was made: “Many figures were proposed in the professional discussions, but because the president mentioned 10,000 tomans, the figure was settled at 10,000”.

The government can say that the price of subsidized gasoline has not changed, and it would be correct. A driver who remains within the personal quota will not pay more for the same number of liters. The impact will be greater on taxi drivers, couriers, workers who travel long distances, high-consumption vehicles, and those without regular access to a personal card.

The indirect impact is more difficult to measure in advance. When the cost of the final kilometer rises, the increase may be passed on to transportation services, deliveries, freight, and products that depend on them. The Pezeshkian government has chosen to implement the change during wartime, when the public is already concerned about rising prices. Under these conditions, any malfunction, shortage, or uneven implementation will take on significance far beyond a change in the price displayed at the pump.

The Dollar Retreats, but Remains High

The currency market provided the government with partial relief. On September 6, the dollar opened on the free market at around 229,000 tomans, approached the 230,000 mark, and closed at around 223,000. The decline came after Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati said the bank was prepared to inject up to $2 billion into the market and claimed that much of the increase had been driven by psychological sentiment.

The day’s trading showed that Central Bank announcements still have an effect, but the dollar remained more than 4% above its level a week earlier. Any development in Hormuz, oil exports, or the nuclear arena could quickly revive demand.

Gold also declined slightly from its peak. On the morning of September 7, the price was quoted at about 23.35 million tomans per gram of 18-karat gold and about 234.98 million tomans for an Emami coin. This represented a decline of roughly 1% to 1.5% from the previous morning, but prices remain far above the levels at which they traded before the latest round of escalation.

The public is not looking only at how many dollars the Central Bank can offer today. The question is whether the government will be able to continue financing imports, subsidies, and the war while the oil fleet is under attack and the nuclear file is returning to the Security Council. A one-day correction provides a little breathing room, not a vote of confidence.

Even Qalibaf Fears the Anti-Infiltration Law Could Go Too Far

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made clear that he supports the law aimed at combating infiltration by foreign services and institutions, but demanded amendments to the provisions dealing with the powers of intelligence agencies and called for the parliament’s legal committee and the judiciary to be involved in reviewing them.

The bill, which has not yet completed the approval process, seeks to expand registration and oversight of contacts between Iranian citizens and institutions and foreign entities. Broad terms such as “cooperation”, “foreign entity”, and “sensitive activity” could require researchers, businesspeople, journalists, and institutions to obtain security approval for routine professional activities.

Qalibaf said the needs of the Intelligence Ministry and the intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards should be addressed “within reasonable frameworks”, but rejected a situation in which the agencies would be required to grant approval at every stage. “In that situation, we would have to lock down the country so they could do their work, and that is impossible”, he said.

This is not opposition to the law. Qalibaf explicitly said that he supports it and even called for it to be advanced quickly. His criticism concerns how to give the security establishment broad powers without turning every connection with the outside world into a process requiring permission.

Outside the authorized media, Hengaw reported that ten people arrested following the January protests in Sabzevar, including a 17-year-old girl and two women, were collectively sentenced to 15 years of suspended imprisonment, fines totaling 1.5 billion tomans, and additional penalties. The court ordered them to attend Friday prayers for two months and ideological classes for three months.

According to Hengaw, the appeals court in Razavi Khorasan Province has already upheld the sentences, but the judgments have not been published and the judiciary has not commented on the details. If the report is accurate, the combination of fines, suspended prison sentences, and compulsory religious education suggests that the purpose of the punishment extends beyond legal deterrence. The state is also seeking to reshape the behavior of those who participated in the protests.

Desk Conclusion: Tehran Is Building Its Own Sanctions, but It Does Not Control the Price

Iran’s move in Hormuz is an attempt to turn geography into policy. Since Tehran cannot dismantle the American sanctions system, it is seeking to establish a counter-system in which compliance with Washington also carries a price. Blacklists, insurance difficulties, and threats to future passage are the tools through which it seeks to impose its own rules.

Iran is capable of raising the level of risk, but it has yet to demonstrate that it can control the area. There is no map of the exclusion zone, no Omani confirmation of the new corridor, and no complete data verifying the scale of oil exports. At the same time, a large American force is operating in the area, redirecting ships, inspecting vessels, and attacking Iranian tankers.

The increase in fuel prices shows that the cost is already being passed on inside the country. The government has preserved the two cheaper quotas, so most drivers will not see the price double every time they refuel. Those who depend on the station card will now pay twice as much, and the increase could also filter through to freight and services. The public hears that oil is being sold “without any problem whatsoever”, and that same evening is told that the price of non-subsidized gasoline is rising.

The Board of Governors meeting adds diplomatic pressure to the picture. If the four Western powers succeed in referring the file to the Security Council, Iran will simultaneously face maritime, economic, and nuclear pressure. Its leverage in Hormuz is real, but the longer it uses that leverage, the greater the damage to oil revenues, the currency, and the government’s ability to ask the public for more patience.