A large portion of Sahara Thunder’s business revolves around the sales of petroleum, condensates and petroleum products on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Defense (MODAFL). The documents show a great demand for these products, though it comes with a price, and a few points that we believe should be underscored: Firstly, most cases show indications of a correspondence between Sahara Thunder to other companies for the sale of the abovementioned products, although in most cases there wasn’t proof for the deals being sealed. All of the clients found were middlemen that were fully aware they are involved with an Iranian company, buying sanctioned Iranian goods. In-fact, most customers seem to be Iranian nationals that operate in different countries, and sell the crude oil to pre-known end users (refineries), mostly in China. Most documents analyzed by us indicate that Sahara Thunder sells (or at least markets) its oil with very large discounts, revolving around 17-29 USD per barrel, compared with regular Iranian crude oil being sold at a discount of about 13 USD per barrel during 2023, according to “Nikkei Asia”. Having mostly Iranian customers, and given the extremely high discount (compared even with “regular” Iranian prices), all functions involved were aware of Sahara Thunder being affiliated with MODAFL. Some examples include Turkish “Adil Plastik LTD” or Chinese “Thenwin Petro Company LLC”, as can be seen by the Persian-written letters they sent Sahara Thunder. Some of the destinations mentioned by the customers are very different from the usual ones for Iranian oil: Poland, Brazil, Romania and South Korea.

WikIran urges the aforementioned customers, end users and involved banks to act against these clandestine means for Iran’s MODAFL to finance itself. We will continue to provide help to any bank/ organization seeking relevant documents to discontinue such mishaps, and welcome more of our readers to contact us. For the full list of documents, click here