The collapse in oil prices has now reached historic levels. Tuesday's 7% plunge in West Texas Intermediate (WTI) - the largest slump in more than 30 years of futures contracts - marked the 12th consecutive daily loss for the New York benchmark. Before rebounding slightly yesterday, crude had been down more than 22% in less than a month. Now, we've spoken many times before about the numerous reasons why crude prices can plunge: artificial manipulation from short sellers and institutional monkeyshines, geopolitical tensions, distortions in supply and demand, even outright oversupply - we've seen it all before. In this present case, some of this current decline is warranted, given the market's overestimation of Iranian sanction impacts and, to a far lesser extent, some weakening in underlying fundamentals. But to be sure, the leading cause of the plunge has been a combination of what I have called the "lemming fixation" (a penchant for jumping off the cliff en masse) and some outright market manipulation. I'll have more to say on this shortly, in a more extensive analysis my team and I are preparing right now. But it's the completely counterintuitive - yet entirely predictable - effect of the recently re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic that I want to explore today... Tags: Oil To get full access to all Money Morning content, click here About Money Morning: Money Morning gives you access to a team of ten market experts with more than 250 years of combined investing experience – for free . Our experts – who have appeared on FOXBusiness, CNBC, NPR, and BloombergTV – deliver daily investing tips and stock picks, provide analysis with actions to take, and answer your biggest market questions. Our goal is to help our millions of e-newsletter subscribers and Moneymorning.com visitors become smarter, more confident investors. Disclaimer: © 2018 Money Morning and Money Map Press. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including the world wide web), of content from this webpage, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Money Morning. 16 W. Madison St. Baltimore, MD, 21201. The post The Shocking Role of Iranian Sanctions in Crude Oil's Plunge appeared first on Money Morning - We Make Investing Profitable .