According to a report published by the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday, January 2, U.S. officials received intelligence about Iran’s oil smuggling scheme but the Biden administration disregarded it.
The report states that in 2024, Biden administration officials reviewed intelligence indicating Iraq’s pivotal role in a billion-dollar oil smuggling operation by the Iranian regime.
Free Beacon, citing informed sources, claims Biden officials ignored much of the information and allowed Iran to bypass U.S. sanctions and earn illicit money, as described by a former U.S. official.
In April, U.S. officials from the State Department, Treasury, and intelligence community reviewed a 45-page report prepared by international organizations.
This report, also reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, identified Iraq, the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, as the central hub for Iran’s oil and fuel smuggling operations in 2022 (during Biden’s presidency).
The intelligence report lists a network of companies in Iraq, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries that divert portions of Iraq’s fuel exports to the black market for illicit profits. This money is then funneled to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which oversees these militias.
In addition to smuggling operations, Iraq’s oil industry blends illicit fuel products from Iran with its legal outputs, enabling the Iranian oil to be legally sold in international markets, in direct violation of stringent U.S. sanctions.
According to the intelligence report, revenues from these sales are also funneled back to Iranian regime proxies and the IRGC. The information indicates that Iraq’s offshore oil sites have effectively become “laundromats” for Iran’s sanctioned crude oil.
