According to WPB, Iran’s president has said the country’s exports and imports have fallen by nearly 35% under the combined pressure of U.S. sanctions and maritime restrictions, providing a broader indication of how deeply the country’s external trade system is being affected by financial and logistical constraints.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said on August 29, 2026 that Iranian exports and imports had declined by approximately 35% because of U.S. sanctions and what Tehran describes as a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The figure represents the Iranian government’s assessment of the decline in foreign trade and should not be treated as an independently verified measurement of individual commodity flows.
For the bitumen market, that distinction is essential. There is no current evidence showing that Iranian bitumen exports themselves have fallen by 35%, and the overall trade figure cannot be applied directly to road-bitumen shipments. What the number does show is that the commercial environment surrounding Iranian exports has become considerably more difficult across shipping, payments, banking relationships and access to international counterparties.
The pressure is developing simultaneously on the physical and financial sides of trade. Preliminary shipping data released on August 28 showed that only seven commodity vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz on August 27, compared with 17 on August 26 and a 10-day average of 15. The figures do not specifically measure bitumen movements, but they illustrate how far general commercial traffic remains from normal levels.
For Iranian bitumen exporters, physical restrictions are only one part of the problem. A cargo can be available at a refinery or storage facility and still become more difficult to sell if the exporter cannot secure an acceptable vessel, arrange insurance, complete a payment, obtain trade finance or find a counterparty willing to carry the compliance risk.
That risk has increased further as U.S. financial pressure expands beyond Iranian banks themselves and toward third-country institutions accused of facilitating Iranian transactions.
On August 28, 2026, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a rule that would revoke Banque Misr UAE’s correspondent banking access to U.S. financial institutions. The measure is specifically directed at Banque Misr’s operations in the United Arab Emirates and does not apply to the bank’s operations in other countries.
The proposal is important because it demonstrates how Iran-related compliance risk can spread into financial institutions located in major regional trade hubs. Under the proposed measure, U.S. financial institutions would be prohibited from opening or maintaining correspondent accounts for Banque Misr UAE and would have to take additional steps to prevent transactions involving the institution from passing indirectly through foreign correspondent accounts.
The action has not yet become a final rule. It remains a proposed measure subject to the regulatory process. It should therefore not be described as a complete shutdown of Banque Misr UAE or as a prohibition on every transaction conducted by the wider Banque Misr group.
Its commercial message, however, is already significant. Financial institutions dealing with transactions that may have an Iranian connection increasingly face the possibility that such activity could affect their own access to the U.S. financial system.
U.S. authorities said Banque Misr UAE processed about $1.8 billion in transactions between January 2024 and June 2026 involving 103 companies assessed as potentially connected to Iranian shadow-banking activity. The allegations include transactions involving companies that U.S. authorities associate with Iranian state and military-linked networks.
The measure follows the launch on August 24 of a wider U.S. campaign designed to increase secondary-sanctions pressure on Iran’s international financial and trading relationships. The campaign specifically identifies petroleum trade, shipping, exchange houses, free-trade zones and overseas financial facilitators as channels that authorities intend to target more aggressively.
For bitumen, the significance lies in the payment chain.
Iranian bitumen is sold in several commercial forms, including bulk cargoes, drums, jumbo bags and other packaged formats. These supply chains differ physically, but every transaction ultimately requires a workable method of settlement between seller and buyer.
When banks increase scrutiny of Iran-related payments, the impact can appear as longer settlement times, additional documentation requirements, rejected intermediaries, changes in payment currency, higher transaction costs or the need to restructure the commercial chain through different counterparties.
None of these effects automatically stops bitumen exports. They can, however, make a transaction slower, more expensive and more difficult to execute.
The same principle applies to logistics. Bulk bitumen exporters depend on a relatively small pool of specialized heated vessels compared with the much larger crude and conventional product tanker markets. If owners, charterers or insurers become more cautious about Iranian exposure, vessel availability can tighten even while physical bitumen remains available for loading.
Packaged bitumen faces a different risk structure. Drums and jumbo bags can move through container and conventional cargo networks and therefore do not depend on specialized heated tankers in the same way. But they remain exposed to banking checks, trade-document scrutiny, carrier acceptance, transshipment restrictions and the availability of workable regional logistics.
For both forms of trade, the result can be a widening gap between the nominal product price and the actual cost of completing the transaction.
A low EXW or FOB indication in Iran does not necessarily translate into a low delivered price for the buyer. Freight, insurance, banking costs, documentation, route changes, longer transit times and additional intermediaries can all increase the final landed cost.
This distinction has become increasingly visible in the Iranian market during August 2026. Iranian factory-level bitumen prices can remain commercially competitive while export execution becomes more expensive and uncertain because the physical and financial channels around the cargo are under pressure.
The 35% foreign-trade figure therefore matters to the bitumen industry primarily as a system-wide warning rather than a direct volume statistic.
It suggests that the difficulties affecting Iranian trade are not confined to one vessel, one port or one financial institution. Exporters and importers are operating in an environment where sanctions exposure, maritime restrictions, access to international banking and counterparty acceptance are affecting a much wider share of commercial activity.
That environment can also change buyer behavior. A customer considering Iranian bitumen may compare not only the quoted price of the binder but also the probability of completing payment, the reliability of the shipping schedule, the possibility of additional compliance checks and the cost of replacing a vessel or intermediary if one becomes unavailable.
As those uncertainties rise, buyers may demand larger discounts to compensate for execution risk, while exporters may need additional intermediaries or more expensive logistics to keep cargoes moving.
The consequence can be commercially paradoxical: Iranian bitumen may remain competitively priced at origin while becoming less competitive after payment, insurance and transportation risks are included.
It would still be incorrect to conclude that Iran’s bitumen export system has stopped functioning. Cargoes continue to be offered, and there is evidence that at least some bulk bitumen movements through the Gulf have remained possible during August 2026. Alternative payment arrangements, trading companies, regional routes and different logistics structures can allow trade to continue.
But continuation of trade does not mean normalization.
The more payment and logistics channels narrow, the more value shifts from the product itself toward the ability to execute the transaction. Access to a bank, an acceptable vessel, a workable port, an insurer and a counterparty willing to complete settlement can become as important as the refinery price of the bitumen.
The August 29 statement on the decline in Iranian foreign trade therefore provides an important new context for the country’s bitumen market. It does not demonstrate a 35% decline in bitumen exports, nor does it provide evidence of a comparable reduction in bitumen production.
What it does demonstrate is that the broader commercial system supporting Iranian exports and imports is operating under substantially greater pressure.
Combined with tighter financial scrutiny of Iran-linked transactions and continued maritime restrictions around the Gulf, that pressure can increase the cost and complexity of exporting Iranian bitumen even when the material itself remains physically available.
For the bitumen market, the transmission chain is increasingly clear: sanctions and maritime restrictions affect banking and logistics; banking and logistics affect payment execution, vessel acceptance and transaction structure; and those factors ultimately influence freight, risk premiums and delivered cost.
Iran’s current bitumen challenge is therefore not necessarily a shortage at the refinery gate. It is the growing difficulty of converting an available ton of bitumen into a completed, paid and delivered export cargo.
By WPB
News, Bitumen, Iran, Foreign Trade, Sanctions, Banking, Payments, Logistics, Freight, Export Risk
