Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed Thursday that the United States is weighing a plan to temporarily lift sanctions on Iranian crude oil currently stranded on tankers in international waters. The announcement signals a significant potential shift in Washington’s approach to managing the global oil price crisis triggered by Iran’s deliberate closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz has had immediate and sweeping consequences for global energy markets. An estimated 10 to 14 million barrels of oil per day have been prevented from transiting the strait, a disruption that has now persisted for close to two weeks and driven crude prices firmly above $100 per barrel.
Bessent told a television audience that approximately 140 million barrels of Iranian crude are aboard tankers in international waters, oil that had been bound for Chinese buyers before the crisis intensified. He described the potential sanctions waiver as a tactical maneuver — turning Iran’s own export capacity against its strategy of using the Hormuz closure to drive up energy prices globally.
The Treasury has previously used this kind of mechanism, issuing a waiver for Russian oil stranded at sea that added approximately 130 million barrels to world supply. Bessent confirmed that the US is also planning a unilateral Strategic Petroleum Reserve release beyond the 400 million barrel G7 coordinated drawdown, while explicitly ruling out any action in financial oil trading markets.
Policy experts were quick to raise alarms. Sanctions compliance professionals and national security analysts warned that allowing Iran to sell its oil — regardless of the waiver’s narrow scope — would provide the Tehran government with financial resources that could be used to fund military campaigns and regional proxy operations. Critics described the proposal as a short-term fix that risks creating long-term strategic problems for the US campaign against Iran.