Oil, gas and Iran economic analyst
Despite years of official rhetoric about a “strategic partnership,” new data show that Russia has slipped from Iran’s list of main trading partners.
Iran’s customs chief Faroud Asgari confirmed the shift without specifying trade volume for the first half of the current Iranian fiscal year (March 21–September 22).
Figures from Iran’s Chamber of Commerce show, however, that bilateral trade totaled less than $1.1 billion in the first five months—just 4.5% of Iran’s total non-oil foreign trade.
This comes despite a 2023 agreement between Tehran and Moscow to boost annual trade to $40 billion after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the onset of Western sanctions.
Last year, Iran–Russia trade stood at $2.5 billion.
Exaggerations
Following reports that Russia had fallen off Iran’s main trading list, Deputy Trade Minister Mohammad Ali Dehgan said Iranian exports to Russia had grown by 30% in the first five months of this year, “approaching one billion dollars.”
But data from the Chamber of Commerce show the real figure was less than half that amount.
Tehran has long tried to frame its ties with Moscow as a deep strategic alliance, though critics say Russia sees Iran merely as a tool in its standoff with the West.
Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently said Russia “sabotaged” talks between Tehran and Western powers, calling any improvement in Iran–West relations a “red line” for the Kremlin.
Despite signing more than 100 memoranda of understanding and contracts in the oil and gas sector, Moscow has failed to implement any of them or deliver promised investments in Iran’s logistics infrastructure.
Even so, Russia moved two weeks ago to activate its “Comprehensive Strategic Agreement” with Tehran—a pact focused on military and security cooperation rather than trade or investment.
In 2018, Moscow pledged $40 billion in investments after US President Donald Trump tore up the 2015 nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions on Iran. That promise never materialized either.
Such agreements appear aimed more at encouraging Tehran to resist Western pressure than advancing real economic cooperation. Iranian officials, in turn, use them to project strength and deny isolation at home and abroad.
Broader trade decline
According to customs data, Iran’s non-oil exports reached about $26 billion in the first half of the fiscal year, nearly unchanged from last year, while imports fell 15% to $28.3 billion.
Iraq remains Iran’s second-largest non-oil export market after China, but exports to Iraq dropped 12% year-on-year to $4.5 billion, mostly food products.
In late September, Iraq banned the import of 44 types of agricultural and livestock goods to protect domestic producers, further cutting Iranian exports.
Three-quarters of Iran’s total exports now go to just five countries—China, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Afghanistan—underscoring the growing concentration and isolation of its trade.
The same pattern holds for imports. For the first time, 80% of Iran’s imports this year have come from only five countries: the UAE, China, Turkey, India, and Germany.
The trend is not promising for Tehran as UN sanctions return: if trade with Russia fails to recover, nearly all of Iran’s economic eggs will be in the Chinese basket.
In an interview with KhabarOnline, Professor Ebrahim Azadegan of Sharif University of Technology said, “These days, we lose one university professor every week.”
Abri-Nia added that between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 academic years, about a quarter of the 6,000 faculty members in key engineering departments at top Iranian universities emigrated.
“I see migration as a wound on the body of our universities, one that keeps deepening,” he said.
The departures highlight a growing brain drain from Iran’s higher education system, long strained by political pressures, economic hardship, and limited academic freedom.
Vetting procedures
The two academics attributed the resignations and departures not only to economic pressures but also to security vetting procedures they said disqualified faculty for reasons such as having signed petitions, being unmarried, or having had a café photo in the US.
Azadegan gave the example of a faculty candidate with a doctorate from Princeton who was rejected from Sharif because “he had a photo with a few girls and boys in a café in America.”
In engineering mechanics at the University of Tehran, Abri-Nia said, “about ten professors either retired early to continue work abroad or went on sabbatical and never returned.”
He added that while many younger scholars accepted research visits abroad, they did not come back, effectively ending their ties to Iranian academia.
Emigrations up after 2022 protests
The boost in faculty emigration follows the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of late 2022, which both academics said coincided with a decline in intellectual freedom on campuses.
According to Azadegan: “We were faced with a disaster at Sharif University in the last three years: nearly 70 professors left and we still haven’t found adequate replacements.”
Azadegan described the events of 2022 as “dark days” for Sharif University, recalling that security forces attacked the campus during nationwide protests, beating many students and faculty “without cause” and imposing a heavy security presence.
In October 2022, security and plainclothes forces surrounded Sharif University, arrested between 30 and 40 students, and opened fire on those attempting to leave the campus.
He said that even now, women stationed at the university gates warn students about dress code violations, surveillance cameras cover much of the campus, and students are still summoned before disciplinary committees over compulsory hijab rules.
Ahmad Esmailzadeh, head of the ministry’s Nutrition Improvement Office, said on Sunday that high prices have driven dairy consumption to record lows, while malnutrition, obesity, and vitamin deficiencies are worsening.
He added that the government plans to resume the long-suspended school milk distribution program within two weeks to support children’s nutrition.
Over 120,000 deaths each year in Iran are linked to diet-related illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity, according to ministry data.
Nearly one in five children is overweight, and up to 70% of Iranians suffer from vitamin D deficiency, Esmailzadeh said.
According to UN Food and Agriculture Organization data, Iran’s per capita dairy consumption fell from 101 kg in 2010 to 70 kg in 2023, less than half the global average.
The decline reflects a broader collapse in household food spending as inflation and sanctions-driven poverty deepen. Meat consumption has dropped 17% over the past decade, and calorie intake has fallen 22% since 2010.
Industry officials say milk exports have surged more than 500% in recent years as domestic demand collapses, following the government’s suspension of free milk distribution in schools during the mid-2010s.
