Manufacturing Gives Iran a Lifeline

Earlier this month, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, the official responsible for planning Iran’s state budgets, told parliament he planned “to sideline oil in the economy and run the country’s programs without oil.” He didn’t have much choice: Iran, Nobakht said, had earned just $8.9 billion from the sale of oil and related products in 2019-20, down from a peak of $119 billion less than a decade ago.

Like their counterparts in other hydrocarbon-dependent states, Iranian officials have long talked about the importance of reducing reliance on oil revenues. But the need for transition to a non-oil economy has become critical, following the Trump administration’s reimposition of secondary sanctions in November 2018, which has left China as the only major purchaser of Iranian crude.