"USA attacks Iran. Oil prices are rising. The world is in turmoil. He knew 40 years ago that it was all just theater.
Oil is soaring, and aviation fuel is doubling in price. From the sky smiles Marc Rich. I wrote here recently that he was probably the most important businessman of the 20th century. Most people know this story superficially: a Jewish trader who fled to Switzerland, pardoned by Clinton on his last day in office.
But the core is elsewhere. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran publicly proclaimed that Israel had no right to exist. That it would never sell it a single barrel. Meanwhile, for over 15 years, Marc Rich was the main seller of Iranian oil and delivered it to Israel via a secret pipeline. 
Both sides knew about it (!) Rich himself admitted in interviews: “We provided them a service. We bought the oil, handled the transport, sold it. They couldn’t do it themselves.” 
This wasn’t a fluke. It was a business model built on one principle: Sanctions don’t eliminate trade. They create a premium for the middleman willing to take the risk.
Rich understood this like no one else. He served the apartheid regime in South Africa, Castro’s Cuba, Gaddafi’s Libya, Ceaușescu’s Romania, and Pinochet’s Chile. He said: “I’m a businessman, not a politician.” 
The scale? It’s estimated that the South Africa business alone brought his firm 2 billion dollars in pure profit. 
Now fast-forward 40 years. The West imposed “unprecedented sanctions” on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The effect? The Russian economy shrank by 2.1% in 2022—and rebounded in 2023, wiping out those losses. The IMF forecasts that Russia will grow faster than France, Germany, and the UK. 
Why? Because middlemen willing to take the risk showed up again. Azerbaijan secured itself the role of Europe’s key energy hub while enabling Russia to sell oil bypassing sanctions. Europe can keep declarations of punishing Putin on their desks while heating homes with Russian gas at the same time. 
The mechanism is simple: SOCAR (Azerbaijan’s state oil company) processes Russian oil at its STAR refinery in Turkey and exports finished products to Europe. About 87% of that refinery’s exports go to G7+ countries. 
Azerbaijani tankers Karabakh, Shusha, Zangezur have been actively transporting Russian oil since November 2023, and none of them has ended up on EU or US sanctions lists.  In other words: Lukoil (subject to US sanctions) → SOCAR refinery in Turkey → Europe. Germany and the rest of the EU buy it. And they do so with full awareness.
What does all this mean? Three things worth remembering:
- Sanctions are a political instrument, not an economic one. Their goal is to signal moral stance, not actually cut off flows. If oil is needed, a path will always be found.
- The middleman in the gray zone earns more than everyone else. Rich built an empire worth billions on this and founded Glencore, today one of the world’s largest commodity traders. The same Glencore that erased him as a founder.
- Public declarations and private interests rarely align. Iran proclaimed it wouldn’t recognize Israel. It sold it oil. Europe proclaims it’s punishing Russia. It buys Russian fuel through Azerbaijan.
Marc Rich once said: “They wanted to sell. Others wanted to buy. I provided the service.” Forty years later, nothing has changed. Only the company names have."
https://x.com/OniszczukAssoc/status/2030255555269238833?s=20