This piece includes original reporting sourced from maritime intelligence firms, financial forensics by Kharon, and an anonymous source with knowledge of Iran's oil accounting. What specifically do you think they got wrong? Happy to look at a better source if you have one.

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Supermancho 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What they got wrong is the title. The premise is bad, to start.

Iran could have leveraged these defensive tactics to make "a mint" from oil exports at any time. The war, for the state that it is in, is not where they are making the money. They have lost money as a consequence of the war and made money from tightening export controls to the point there are physical barriers. The forensic accounting is incidental and well understood from other nations (eg Russia, NK, etc).

The concluding paragraph that might tie these rather boring descriptions of economic machination together, is barely coherent. Read it carefully.

> The extreme redundancy introduces such complexity that the money is getting harder to trace even for Iran’s central bank—and easier for the country’s oil barons to skim. But it keeps the oil machine going. Short of all-out strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure—to which Iran would respond by bombing that of other Gulf states—it will not be throttled.

Both sentences are baseless indictments, at best. First aimed at oil producers who are "skimming", which they are not. The second run-on is gaslighting Iran as a state, as hell-bent on bombing unnamed neighbors in "the gulf" which seems purposefully chosen as ambiguous.

Is stating facts about the minutia of circumventing sanctions, then demonizing the actors, considered journalism? I don't think so.

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Jimmc414 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> What they got wrong is the title. The premise is bad, to start.

Admittedly, the title is somewhat misleading. It doesn't take into account the massive costs Iran is absorbing in destroyed infrastructure, steel production offline, millions displaced, economy in freefall.

> Iran could have leveraged these defensive tactics to make "a mint" from oil exports at any time. The war, for the state that it is in, is not where they are making the money. They have lost money as a consequence of the war and made money from tightening export controls to the point there are physical barriers. The forensic accounting is incidental and well understood from other nations (eg Russia, NK, etc).

This is incorrect. The Strait of Hormuz blockade is a wartime measure. Iran couldn't have blockaded Hormuz in peacetime without triggering the kind of military response it's now already absorbing. The war is what made the blockade possible as a strategy. Iran had nothing left to lose by escalating. The pre war discount was $18–24/barrel. It's now $7–12. That improvement is directly war driven.

> Both sentences are baseless indictments, at best. First aimed at oil producers who are "skimming", which they are not.

The Economist isn't making a moral indictment as much as it's describing a consequence of routing payments through thousands of shell accounts across multiple jurisdictions.

> The second run-on is gaslighting Iran as a state, as hell-bent on bombing unnamed neighbors in "the gulf" which seems purposefully chosen as ambiguous.

Iran has explicitly threatened retaliatory strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure. This isn't speculation or gaslighting, it's stated Iranian deterrence. The article is describing the strategic calculus that makes all out infrastructure strikes unlikely.

> is stating facts then demonizing actors journalism?

You are recharacterizing conclusions drawn from reported facts as demonization, which lets you dismiss any reporting that reaches an unflattering conclusion about any actor.

Which specific factual claim in the article do you think is wrong?

	▲	Supermancho 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The Strait of Hormuz blockade is a wartime measure. Iran couldn't have blockaded Hormuz in peacetime without triggering the kind of military response it's now already absorbing. So they could have, for the reasons you have pointed out. It's not "because of the war" but it is a consequence for someone to do something they could have done and "triggered the kind of military response it's now already absorbing." - you and I have a very different idea of what reality is. > The Economist isn't making a moral indictment as much as it's describing a consequence of routing payments through thousands of shell accounts across multiple jurisdictions. Please don't do that. None of the last paragraph is about consequence of routing payments. I have pointed out how the facts are a facade for demonization. I stand by it.