The 158 Billion Barrel Woman

Can Elham Hassanzadeh get the oil flowing in Iran?

- Peter Waldman

At Monsoon, a bistro in Tehran that serves sushi, Szechwan beef, and Gouda and calamari on whole wheat toast, the fusion cuisine is an act of defiance. So are the women’s fashions—tight robes, exposed calves, headscarves that barely conceal blond and henna-colored hairstyles. The restaurant, with its rough concrete walls, red countertops, and statues of Hindu and Buddhist goddesses, looks more Manhattan than Islamic Republic. Seated at a corner table is Elham Hassanzadeh, almost 6 feet tall, with dark eyes, thick eyebrows, and lush brown hair that overflows her hijab. Her dining companions are the middle-aged bosses of two large Iranian engineering and construction companies.

Raised in a pistachio-farming family in tradition-minded southern Iran, Hassanzadeh, 31, earned her law degree and Ph.D. in the U.K. on scholarships. She literally wrote the book on Iran’s natural gas industry since the 1979 Islamic revolution—it was published last year by Oxford University Press. She has returned to Iran to head a consulting firm, Energy Pioneers, based in Tehran and London, that’s at the vanguard of Iran’s all-out push to lure back foreign investors after the expected lifting of sanctions in coming months. Iran is counting on Western technology and hoping to raise $100 billion in overseas financing to double its oil and gas production in the next five years. Hassanzadeh is building a business by parlaying a deep knowledge of Iran’s energy resources, close ties to government technocrats and industry leaders in Tehran, and high-level contacts at major oil companies, law firms, and investment houses in the West.