Iran’s oil gamble could turn Gulf attrition into Tehran’s own nightmare - opinion

Since the current round of fire erupted, the mullah regime has consciously chosen a sustained low-intensity campaign: ballistic missiles, drones, and scattered strikes on energy facilities, ports, and military and civilian targets. This calibrated escalation guarantees noise but stops short of all-out war.

Behind this image lies a clear bet on gradually wearing down adversaries, raising the cost of defense, and keeping energy and financial markets in a state of permanent anxiety that pushes major capitals to press for de-escalation.

This equation, however tempting on paper, conceals a highly dangerous contradiction: Iran is squeezing the oil card against the Gulf and the West, yet it ultimately depends on the continued sale of its own oil as the last real artery of hard currency.

Beijing now accounts for the largest share of Iranian seaborne crude exports, averaging between 1.3 million and 1.4 million barrels per day, while independent Chinese refineries have built a large portion of their profitability on discounted Iranian crude, alongside Russian oil.

Although this pattern of single-buyer dependence gives Tehran an important financial resource, it simultaneously creates a serious structural fragility. Any prolonged disruption to exports would not be a passing crisis but a direct threat to the Iranian economy’s ability to breathe.

Without a doubt, any large-scale strike targeting Iran’s export terminals, from Khuzestan to Kharg Island, will not just be a problem for Tehran; it will instantly turn into a supply crisis and financial pressure on those refineries, which already operate on thin profit margins.

On the other hand, Pakistan, which benefits to varying degrees from Iranian oil through official and unofficial channels, possesses neither the economic nor the military capacity to serve as a genuine guarantor of this artery.

The hard truth is that, in the end, the ceiling of partners is set by the energy bill and the stability of supplies, not by speeches of political solidarity.

Here begins the paradox that seems absent from much of the hysterical Iranian propaganda discourse. Tehran sometimes behaves as if targeting Gulf energy facilities can remain a one-sided game, as if opening the door to oil attrition will not alter the rules of engagement. But reality says something entirely different.

The party that legitimizes the targeting of its adversaries’ oil infrastructure gradually loses the political, moral, and even operational capacity to object when its own oil facilities become part of the target bank.

Certainly, this is not a rhetorical matter but the cold, harsh logic of wars. Targeting energy facilities does not produce permanent superiority; rather, it creates a state of mutual vulnerability to legitimate retaliatory reaction.

With each new wave of attacks, the red lines that once separated conventional military warfare from warfare against economic arteries erode.

Consequently, at that point, the conflict ceases to be a mere exchange of missiles and defensive interceptions and turns into an open battle over the very ability to export oil and protect the economy.

On the tactical level, Tehran also bets on the dilemma of asymmetric deterrence. A cheap drone or a short-range missile can exhaust an expensive interceptor missile, and each wave of attacks imposes high defense spending, partial disruption of airports and ports, and market anxiety.

But the goal here is not limited to direct military pressure – it extends to internationalizing the cost of the conflict by turning energy turmoil into a global crisis that drives major powers to seek a quick settlement.

Yet this Iranian game collides with three realities that are difficult to ignore. A sanctioned economy cannot endure a prolonged war of attrition targeting its oil facilities. China wants cheap and stable oil, not chronic chaos that threatens supply security and raises global energy costs.

The Iranian leadership may bet that Beijing will not allow a complete collapse of Iran’s export capacity. This bet contains a grain of truth, no doubt. China will apply political pressure to prevent a total explosion. But it is not an ideological ally ready to pay any price.

China certainly realizes that its loss would be financial and negotiating leverage. But it will not turn into an existential threat.

For Iran, however, losing its export capacity for an extended period could become a shock that touches the regime’s stability itself and closes off its last effective artery of hard currency.

The problem with wars of attrition is that they rarely remain under the full control of those who start them. With each new horizontal escalation, and with every movement of the war from the military field to the economic infrastructure of energy and trade, the likelihood increases of sliding into a stage where everyone loses the ability to control the ceiling of escalation.

When wars reach the stage of targeting oil arteries, the question is no longer how many missiles were launched or how many drones were intercepted, but which economy possesses the real capacity to endure a prolonged hemorrhage in its vital structure.

In the end, Tehran may discover too late that the attrition it intended for its adversaries on the other shore of the Gulf has begun to leak from within itself.

The message is that Iran, which builds a large part of its financial survival on oil exports, cannot turn energy into an open weapon without its own oil facilities becoming legitimate targets in the eyes of its adversaries.

Wars that begin by targeting energy flows rarely end at the boundaries of political messages, because they rapidly turn into a struggle over the very capacity for economic survival.