The CEO of Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Mohsen Khojasteh Mehr, said on 30 March that the Islamic Republic’s crude oil exports increased by 40 percent since the new administration came into office, despite a US campaign to seize Iranian oil tankers.

“We have exported more to some of the target countries than during the implementation of the JCPOA,” Khojasteh Mehr said, suggesting that US sanctions have done little to curb the success of Iran’s oil industry.

“Compared to the beginning of the new government, exports of gas condensate have increased two and a half times. In the field of crude oil, we have had an overall increase of more than 40 percent in exports,” he added.

According to a report by Reuters last month, Iran’s oil exports have exceeded one million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time in nearly three years despite US sanctions.

During a meeting with his Iranian counterpart in China on 30 March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that his country will increase cooperation with Iran in all fields, particularly in the methods to circumvent US sanctions.

“One of the tools of the unacceptable policy (of the West) is the mechanism of unilateral and illegitimate sanctions. In our relations with Iran and our other close partners, we will seek both the condemnation of this unacceptable phenomenon in international discussions, and we will take practical steps that will allow us to circumvent these illegal actions,” Lavrov said.

The US policy of economic sanctions is aimed at “undermining the principle of the sovereign equality of states,” the Russian foreign minister added.

Alongside harsh sanctions, the US has also led a campaign to seize Iranian oil tankers traveling through international waters in an attempt to prevent an increase in the country’s exports.

Despite this, Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji said in an interview with Fars News Agency that Iran has sent “oil to places the Americans cannot even think of,” adding that, in total, “revenue from oil, gas condensate, petrochemical products, oil products, and gas exports have more than doubled.”