Iran Has Lessons on Grim Survival for Russia Under Sanctions

Tehran’s past experiences of collapsed growth, smuggling crude and oil well preservation provide a template for Russia’s future.

An offshore oil platform in the Persian Gulf's Salman Oil Field, operated by the National Iranian Offshore Oil Co., near Lavan island, Iran.

Photographer: Ali Mohammadi/Bloomberg
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The founder of one of the first Iranian ad agencies to focus on social media has some advice for Russian businesses, now their country too is under international sanctions: You’ll adapt and survive, but it’ll be brutal.

Ahmad Norouzi, chief executive officer of Click, said it took a while to accept that the firm’s clientele of multinationals were gone for good, but that they found domestic replacements soon enough. The catch: annual revenues fell from about $2.3 million before sanctions struck again in 2018, to $285,000 today.