Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented the potential Iranian crude oil waiver Thursday as an alternative to prolonged price pain, arguing that allowing approximately 140 million barrels of Iranian crude stranded on tankers to enter global markets offers a less costly path than continued price elevation above $100 per barrel. Bessent said the measure is under active consideration as part of the administration’s emergency response to Iran’s Hormuz blockade.
The prolonged price pain created by Iran’s Hormuz blockade has been the driving motivation for the administration’s emergency supply measures. With between 10 and 14 million barrels of daily supply removed from global markets for close to two weeks, the pain has been spreading across industries, economies, and households worldwide.
Bessent said the Iranian crude on tankers, originally heading toward Chinese buyers, represents an alternative that could interrupt the prolonged pain cycle. A targeted temporary waiver could redirect this oil to global markets, providing roughly two weeks of price relief — an alternative pain interruption that would buy time for the US campaign to resolve the Hormuz crisis.
The Treasury has previously deployed comparable pain interruption measures, including a waiver for Russian oil that added approximately 130 million barrels to world supply. An additional unilateral US Strategic Petroleum Reserve release beyond the G7’s 400 million barrel joint commitment is also being prepared, while the administration maintains its firm opposition to financial market intervention.
Experts challenged the alternative framing. Compliance professionals and national security analysts warned that the alternative to prolonged price pain offered by the Iranian crude waiver comes with its own set of costs: revenues for the Iranian regime that could fund military activities and proxy support. Critics argued that neither the prolonged price pain nor the strategic cost of enabling Iranian oil revenues represents an acceptable outcome, and that the administration should focus on resolving the Hormuz crisis more rapidly rather than choosing between two flawed alternatives.