Iran Defies US Sanctions Amid Looming Deal

Iran arrived at the negotiating table from a position of strength, equipped with "strategic levers of pressure that affected the regional and global economy". That judgment, published in Haaretz by Zvi Bar'el, now sits uneasily beside reports of an imminent deal between Iran and the United States that have triggered alarm across Israeli media. The anxiety is not over what Iran prevented. It is over what Iran endured. Iran has sustained itself under sanctions, and the prospect of an agreement has forced parts of Israel's press to ask whether years of pressure changed Tehran less than they changed the assumptions of its opponents.

Iran's currency hit record lows after the United States reinstated economic sanctions following Donald Trump's abandonment of the nuclear deal in May 2018. Trump said he wanted to apply "maximum pressure" on Tehran to compel it to renegotiate. The sanctions imposed substantial costs. Economic hardship helped trigger widespread protests in November 2019, and Iran's leaders remained defiant. The restrictions themselves were blunt: international sanctions sought to constrain Iran's economic and geopolitical influence by targeting its financial system, oil exports and international trade, and they were designed to weaken the country's economic capacity and limit its ability to finance strategic and military programmes. Yet the Iranian economy continued to function. That survival has become a geopolitical fact in its own right.

The numbers are not trivial. Iran's GDP was worth $436.91bn in 2024, representing 0.41 per cent of the world economy. More important than the aggregate figure is where the country's leverage sits. Iran is the third-largest producer in OPEC and pumps about 4.5 per cent of global oil supplies. Its output totals about 3.3mn barrels a day of crude, plus 1.3mn barrels a day of condensate and other liquids. In 2025 it exported nearly 820,000 barrels a day of fuel. And it exports 90 per cent of its crude via Kharg Island. A state under pressure can still matter enormously if it occupies a chokepoint the world cannot ignore.

Military force can destroy assets quickly. Political outcomes rarely move at the same speed.

That is why the military campaign launched this year carries ambitions beyond destroying infrastructure. The U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran that began on February 28, 2026, have three objectives: halting Iran's nuclear programme, rolling back its ballistic missile programme, and neutralising the threat posed by Iranian-backed armed networks. But the current campaign goes beyond the destruction of those capabilities. It also aims to weaken Iran's leadership and ultimately bring about regime change. The escalation carries risks of its own because the attack could disrupt oil and gas output and damage energy infrastructure in the Middle East. Military force can destroy assets quickly. Political outcomes rarely move at the same speed.

That mismatch runs through the Israeli reaction to the expected agreement. Ben Caspit argued in Maariv that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won key battles but lost the broader struggle with Iran. His formulation was stark: "The only event whose power outweighs the military victories we achieved in recent years over Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran is the political defeat we suffered against them immediately afterward." Another Maariv columnist, Avi Ashkenazi, lamented Israel's inability to shape the agreement, writing that "Israel was unable to influence the content of the agreement due to the failure of the political echelon." Ynet reported that Israeli officials were concerned by their lack of influence over the outcome of the talks, and a senior Israeli official described the impending deal as a "bad agreement".

The striking feature of these complaints is not that Israeli commentators dislike the deal

The striking feature of these complaints is not that Israeli commentators dislike the deal. It is that many of them describe the same loss: influence. They fear an agreement that will further empower Tehran. Bar'el's argument explains why. Iran has moved beyond merely seeking survival and is once again asserting itself as a regional power. Sanctions inflicted pain. Military operations imposed costs. Yet the state those policies sought to constrain still sits at the negotiating table, still exports oil, still funds itself and still shapes the calculations of its adversaries.

That is the uncomfortable fact now surfacing in Israeli debate. The question is no longer whether Iran can absorb pressure. The critical question is how Iran has managed to sustain economic activity under such constraints and continue funding state expenditures, including its defence infrastructure. An imminent agreement has not created that question. It has simply exposed that, after years of sanctions, conflict and isolation, it remains unanswered.