The United States in the Gulf → Iran and the Gulf

The parties

• The United States in the Gulf imposes restrictions on Iran and the Gulf
• Iran and the Gulf subject to restrictions by The United States in the Gulf

A directional arrangement: the two parties do not hold the same position in it. Authored once and read from both ends.

Status

Active

In force and operating. Says nothing about how well it is working, or about which way it is heading.

Last material change: 2025-02.

What the arrangement covers

Categories the arrangement is documented to include. Not a measure: a relationship covering more of them is described in more detail, not held more firmly.

Summary

United States restrictions on Iran predate the current phase by decades and are the most extensive of any state's. In February 2025 the administration directed a renewed maximum-pressure policy of sanctions and diplomacy, and through the 2026 war the architecture has been extended to third parties, including designations of Chinese refiners purchasing Iranian crude. This record carries the standing restrictive relationship. Individual designations are events, the naval measures applied to Iranian exports during the war are military action rather than sanctions, and the economic consequences belong to the module's exposure analysis — three separate things that this module deliberately does not model as one.

Why it matters

The sanctions architecture sets the terms on which Iran can sell the commodity the whole region trades, and its practical ceiling is the willingness of buyers outside the measures to keep buying. That is why the Iranian export dependency on China is authored as its own relationship rather than as a line in this one.

Related events

• The United States withdraws from the JCPOA 8 May 2018

  Diplomatic · Sanctions

Systems it depends on

Canonical logistics records. They carry the corridors, nodes, dependence and disruption history that this relationship rests on and does not restate.

What remains unknown

• The instruments are numerous, layered and repeatedly amended; this record describes the standing relationship rather than enumerating measures. The designation record belongs to the Timeline.
• The naval interdiction of Iranian exports reported from April 2026 is a military measure and is not authored here as a sanctions instrument.