What does Iran produce and export?

Oil in the Middle East began in Iran. A concession granted in 1901 led to the discovery at Masjed Soleyman in 1908, in the folded Zagros belt where anticlines of porous limestone trap oil beneath the surface in structures large enough to see from the air. The industry was nationalized in 1951, an act that set the pattern for producing states everywhere. Iran produced 5.2% of the world's crude oil in 2025 (Energy Institute). Its export trade does not match that share, because sanctions have for years limited which buyers will take Iranian barrels and at what discount, and shipments move through intermediaries rather than through the open market that the trade statistics capture.

Gas is the larger resource and the more constrained one. South Pars, the Iranian portion of a single enormous reservoir in the Gulf shared with Qatar, holds one of the largest concentrations of gas anywhere. Iran produced 6.3% of the world's natural gas in 2025 (Energy Institute), yet almost none of it is liquefied for export, because building liquefaction plants requires technology and capital that sanctions have kept out. The gas is therefore consumed domestically: burned for power and winter heating, reinjected into oilfields to maintain pressure, and converted into ammonia, urea and methanol.

The same cheap gas explains the steel industry. Iran reduces iron ore with natural gas rather than smelting it with coke, a route that suits a country with abundant gas and no coking coal, and it is among the largest producers of directly reduced iron in the world. The ore comes from Chadormalu, Gol-e-Gohar and other magnetite deposits in the central desert, concentrated and pelletized near the mines. Iran mined 3.7% of the world's iron ore in 2025 (USGS), nearly all of it consumed by domestic mills rather than shipped, which is why the country appears among the largest miners but not among the ore exporters.