Iran YouTube Stories: Journalist Exposes Intelligence Agents Running Iran’s Oil Industry

Since the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former Supreme Leader, in a joint US-Israeli strike, many Iranian academics, journalists, and officials have openly criticized the regime’s corruption and mismanagement in interviews and discussions shared on YouTube. In a new series called Iran YouTube Stories, we summarize some of these unprecedented discussions, which shed light on previously hidden aspects of the Islamic Republic and how it has governed Iran. In a YouTube interview on his own channel, Yashar Soltani, an Iranian journalist and researcher who has investigated economic corruption, says sanctions have become a pretext for abandoning transparency and accountability in the sale of one of Iran’s most important public assets. Discussing the Islamic Republic’s oil-sales system, Soltani argues that in recent years, the government has transformed what should be a specialized commercial process into a security-driven operation involving individuals and networks outside the formal structure of the Oil Ministry. In the interview, he explicitly names Hossein Shamkhani, the son of Ali Shamkhani, as well as Ruhollah Razavi, identifying them as oil sellers and major debtors to the country. According to Soltani, in a conventional oil-sales system, a specific institution is responsible for marketing and selling oil, the buyer is identified, the
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