Economic Strategy

Economic Strategy

Investigating the effect of oil sanctions and JCPOA on input-output table of Iran economy: the approach of complex networks

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Parviz Rostamzadeh 1
Masumeh Mohammadi 2
Zeinab Yadegar 1
1 Assistant Professor, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
2 Master's degree graduate, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
10.22034/es.2025.489307.1812
Abstract
After World War II, sanctions have gained a strategic position in international policies as a tool to advance political objectives without resorting to military intervention. While Iran has been under varying levels of sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, it has faced broader and more targeted sanctions, particularly in the fields of oil exports and access to financial resources, since the early 2010s. With the approval of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, part of these pressures were temporarily alleviated. Since Iran's economy is structurally dependent on oil, evaluating the effects of these sanctions and the openings created by the JCPOA on key sectors of Iran's economy appears to be an unavoidable necessity. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the impact of sanctions and the JCPOA on the structural position of Iran's economic sectors. Using the theory of complex networks, it compares the input-output network structure of Iran's economy in 2001, 2011, and 2016. The results of comparing these three networks indicate that the level of intra-network connections between economic sectors increased after the imposition of oil sanctions, while after the signing of the JCPOA, these links diminished. Additionally, an analysis of the structural position of various sectors shows that the impact of these developments was not uniform, with some sectors experiencing an upgrade, while others faced a decline in their position within the country's economic network. The findings of this research can provide a clear outlook for economic policymakers in identifying vulnerable sectors and formulating effective strategies to cope with the consequences of sanctions.
Keywords
Iran’s economy
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
sanctions
input-output table
complex network

Subjects

پورعبادالهان‌کویچ، محسن؛ پناهی، حسین و جوادزاده، لیلا (1398). تأثیر تحریم‌های بین‌المللی بر صادرات زیربخش‌های صنعتی ایران. نشریه علمی (فصلنامه) پژوهش‌های اقتصاد صنعتی، 3(9)، 55-67.
جهانی، زهرا (1398). تحلیل مقیاس‌های شبکه‌ی اقتصاد ایران و شناسایی بخش‌های حساس نسبت به تحریم‌ها، پایان‌نامه کارشناسی ارشد، دانشگاه شیراز.
حسنوند، علی‌اکبر؛ حسنوند، داریوش و نادمی، یونس (1397). تأثیر تحریم­ها بر صادرات غیر­نفتی، سیاست­های راهبردی و کلان، 4(6)، 666-684.
دشتبان فاروجی، سحر و درگاهی، حسن (1400). جایگاه ایران در شبکه تجارت بین­المللی گاز طبیعی: کاربرد نظریه گراف. فصلنامه علمی انرژی ایران، 24(1)، 7-24.
رستم­زاده، پرویز و یادگار، زینب (1401). آسیب‌پذیری شبکه سرایت بازار سهام ایران: رویکرد نظریه شبکه­های پیچیده. فصلنامه اقتصاد و الگو سازی، 13(1)، 93-118.
شیشه­گری، طه؛ معمارنژاد، عباس؛ غفاری، فرهاد و حسینی، سید شمس­الدین (1401). شدت تحریم­های بخش انرژی و تأثیر آن بر تجارت ایران، کاربردی از معادله جاذبه. پژوهشنامه اقتصاد انرژی ایران، 11(44)، 73-103.
صیادی، محمد و برکشلی، فریدون (1391). اثرات کوتاه‌مدت و بلندمدت تحریم‌های بین‌المللی نفتی بر بخش انرژی ایران. گزارش راهبردی مرکز تحقیقات استراتژیک، (155)، 4-48.
کیومرثی، مسعود؛ احمدی شادمهری، محمدطاهر؛ سلیمی‌فر، مصطفی و ابریشمی، حمید (1398). بررسی اثر تحریم‌های مالی و انرژی بر شکاف تولید در اقتصاد ایران. فصلنامه پژوهش‌های اقتصادی ایران، 24(79)، 33-66.
منظور، داوود و رجبی، سجاد (1398). ارزیابی جایگاه بخش انرژی در اقتصاد ایران با به کارگیری روش حذف فرضی تعمیم یافته. فصلنامه تحقیقات مدلسازی اقتصادی دانشگاه خوارزمی، 10(35)، 69-110.
 
Baek, E. C.; Hyon, R.; López, K.; Finn, E. S.; Porter, M. A. & Parkinson, C. (2022). In-degree centrality in a social network is linked to coordinated neural activity. Nature communications, 13(1), 1118.
Berner, R.; Cecchetti, S. & Schoenholtz, K. (2022). Russian sanctions: Some questions and answers. VoxEU. org, 21.
Boito, P. & Grena, R. (2021). Quantum hub and authority centrality measures for directed networks based on continuous-time quantum walks. Journal of Complex Networks, 9(6), cnab038.
Bon, R. & Minami, K. (2024). The role of construction in the national economy: a comparison of the fundamental structure of the US and Japanese input-output tables since World War II. In Economic Structure and Maturity: Collected Papers in Input-output Modelling and Applications (pp. 175-183). Routledge.
Brown, P. (2020). Oil market effects from US economic sanctions: Iran, Russia, Venezuela (Vol. 3, 154-196). Washington, DC, USA: Congressional Research Service.
Cai, H.; Huang, S. & Wu, Z. (2023). The impact of COVID-19 on the international energy trade network centrality and community structures. Applied Economics Letters, 30(8), 1042-1046.
Chen, Y. E.; Fu, Q.; Zhao, X.; Yuan, X. & Chang, C. P. (2019). International sanctions’ impact on energy efficiency in target states. Economic Modelling, (82), 21-34.
Crozet, M. & Hinz, J. (2020). Friendly fire: The trade impact of the Russia sanctions and counter-sanctions. Economic Policy, 35(101), 97-146.
Dizaji, S. F. (2021). The impact of sanctions on the banking system: new evidence from Iran. In Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions (330-350). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Doostmohammadian, M.; Kharazmi, S. & Rabiee, H. R. (2024). How clustering affects the convergence of decentralized optimization over networks: a Monte-Carlo-based approach. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 14(1), 135.
Erdőháti-Kiss, A.; Janik, H.; Tóth, A.; Tóth-Naár, Z. & Erdei-Gally, S. (2023). The effectiveness of Russian import sanction on the international apple trade: Network theory approach. Journal of Eastern European and Central Asian Research (JEECAR), 10(5), 712-726.
Farzanegan, M. R. & Batmanghelidj, E. (2024). Understanding economic sanctions on Iran: A survey. The Economists’ Voice, 20(2), 197-226.
Ghasseminejad, S. & Jahan-Parvar, M. R. (2021). The impact of financial sanctions: The case of Iran. Journal of Policy Modeling, 43(3), 601-621.
Ghomi, M. (2022). Who is afraid of sanctions? The macroeconomic and distributional effects of the sanctions against Iran. Economics & Politics, 34(3), 395-428.
Jabari, L.; Salem, A. A.; Zamani, O. & Farzanegan, M. R. (2024). Economic sanctions and energy efficiency: Evidence from Iranian industrial sub-sectors. Energy Economics, (139), 107920.
Kabir, M. H. & Mohammadyani, D. (2024). The Mechanism & Impact of Sanctions on Global Production Networks (GPNs), Case Study: Iran’s Oil Industry.
Kreibich, H.; Van Loon, A. F.; Schröter, K.; Ward, P. J.; Mazzoleni, M.; Sairam, N. ... & Di Baldassarre, G. (2022). The challenge of unprecedented floods and droughts in risk management. Nature, 608(7921), 80-86.‏
Laudati, D. & Pesaran, M. H. (2023). Identifying the effects of sanctions on the Iranian economy using newspaper coverage. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 38(3), 271-294.
Lee, J.; Lee, Y.; Oh, S. M. & Kahng, B. (2021). Betweenness centrality of teams in social networks. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 31(6).
Li, Y.; Tang, Z.; Chen, Z.; Sun, M.; Zhao, B.; Li, H. ... & Xu, Y. (2024). Neural-network density functional theory based on variational energy minimization. Physical Review Letters, 133(7), 076401.
Meyer, K. E.; Fang, T.; Panibratov, A. Y.; Peng, M. W. & Gaur, A. (2023). International business under sanctions. Journal of World Business, 58(2), 101426.
Morgan, T. C.; Syropoulos, C. & Yotov, Y. V. (2023). Economic sanctions: Evolution, consequences, and challenges. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 37(1), 3-29.
Mustafoyev, G. S.; Maxmudov, S. & Ulugmurodov, F. F. (2025). Economic fluctuations and sectoral growth in Iran: A decade of challenges and opportunities (2010–2021). International Journal on Economics, Finance and Sustainable Development, 7(1), 43-46.
Shahnazi, R.; Sajedianfard, N. & Melatos, M. (2023). Import and export resilience of the global oil trade network. Energy Reports. (10), 2017-2035.
Song, Y.; Bai, W. & Zhang, Y. (2024). Resilience assessment of trade network in copper industry chain and the risk resistance capacity of core countries: Based on complex network. Resources Policy, (92), 105034.
Telarico, F. A. (2023). Are sanctions for losers? A network study of trade sanctions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08193.
Ustiashvili, S. (2023). Examining the Impact of Sanctions and the Aftermath of the JCPOA on Iran’s Economy. Journal of Research in Social Science and Humanities, 2(8), 19-31.
Zhang, H.; Wang, Y.; Yang, C. & Guo, Y. (2021). The impact of country risk on energy trade patterns based on complex network and panel regression analyses. Energy, (222), 119979.
Zhang, P.; Wang, T. & Yan, J. (2022). PageRank centrality and algorithms for weighted, directed networks. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, (586), 126438.
Zheng, S.; Zhou, X.; Tan, Z.; Zhang, H.; Liu, C.; Hao, H. ... & Luo, W. (2022). Preliminary study on the global impact of sanctions on fossil energy trade: Based on complex network theory. Energy for Sustainable Development, (71), 517-531.

  • Receive Date 19 November 2024
  • Revise Date 12 April 2025
  • Accept Date 11 May 2025