Iranian state television claimed that Mohsen Paknejad, who has served as oil minister since August 2024, had already tried to resign before due to personal reasons, a request which Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian refused. However, the presidential office claims to have accepted the resignation after Paknejad insisted.
"With acceptance of Mohsen Paknejad's resignation by Dr. Pezeshkian [the country's president], Hamid Bovard has been appointed as acting oil minister," Iranian state media said, citing an official from the presidential office. The presidential official praised Paknejad's "efforts and sincere service."
Although Tehran's statements suggest that the resignation was voluntary, the Iranian oil industry is facing unprecedented challenges. The U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports is working.
Homayoun Falakshahi, the head of crude oil analysis at market intelligence platform Kpler, reported on Thursday that Iran had loaded no oil whatsoever at its export terminals in September, marking the first time Iran's oil loadings had completely stopped since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The value of the Iranian rial is in freefall. The currency has lost more than half of its value in 2026, and was trading at record lows of 2.688 million rials to the dollar on Saturday.
When revenue from Iranian oil still at sea dries up, which is expected to happen by the end of the year as the final payments could be collected as late as December, the Iranian regime will have to do without its erstwhile primary source of hard currency.
Oil revenue is also a key source of funding for the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), whose attacks on commercial shipping in the key global oil transit chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz provide Tehran with crucial leverage in negotiations with the U.S.
Hostilities with the U.S. have taken a heavy toll on various aspects of the Iranian economy; year-on-year inflation is running at 90%, Iran's GDP is expected to contract by 5.4% in 2026 and unemployment is increasing.
President Donald Trump has resisted recent Iranian calls to return to the negotiating table; the president rejected an Iranian proposal, announced at the UN General Assembly in late September, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week of Trump's acceptance of the offer.
The Trump administration's rhetoric towards Iran has grown increasingly confident in recent weeks, with Trump promising on September 27th that the end of hostilities, and a consequent drop in global oil and domestic fuel prices, is imminent.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also claimed in an interview with Axios which aired on Saturday that "for the first time in [Iran's] history, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week."
Bessent's claim basically matches up with analysis from Kpler, which estimated that Iran had 90 million barrels of oil on the water in mid-July when the U.S. reimposed its blockade. Kpler predicted that this oil at sea would run out mid-October.
Iran's apparent growing economic weakness could be a factor in the U.S. decision to prolong the conflict instead of returning to the negotiating table, as Tehran had proposed.
