Iran Can Survive Blockade Longer Than Trump Claims, Leaked Intel Shows

An analysis from the CIA has seriously undermined President Donald Trump’s claims about Iran’s economic resilience.

A confidential CIA analysis delivered to policymakers this week found that Iran can survive three or four months of the U.S. military’s blockade before facing more severe economic hardship, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Iran also retains significant ballistic missile capabilities, three U.S. officials familiar with the report told the Post.

Despite weeks of bombing by U.S. and Israeli forces, Iran still has 70 percent of its prewar stockpile of missiles and 75 percent of its mobile launchers, one official said. Iran has also been able to recover its underground storage facilities, repair damaged missiles, and assemble new ones.

The analysis suggests that Iran can survive the U.S. blockade for another 90 to 120 days, casting serious doubt on Trump’s repeated claims about Iran’s supposedly crashing economy.

“They’re failing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday. “They’re currency is worthless, their inflation is probably 150 percent, the real number is 150 percent, they aren’t paying their soldiers, they can’t pay their soldiers, their money is worthless.”

In fact, Trump has been claiming Iran’s economy is in shambles for weeks. “I think Iran is in very bad shape. I think they’re pretty desperate,” he said last month, a week after the blockade was first installed.

The White House has touted the combination of the U.S. military blockade on Iranian ports and the so-called Operation Economic Fury, a series of sanctions on Iran, as rendering serious damage to the country’s economic situation.

But “it’s nowhere near as dire as some have claimed,” one person familiar with the CIA’s analysis said of Iran’s economic situation. Tehran has been storing its oil on tanker ships that would otherwise be empty, they told the Post.

Another U.S. official suggested that Iran could extend its economic resilience even further by smuggling oil through overland routes. “There’s a belief they could begin moving some oil via rail through Central Asia,” the official told the Post.

This news comes as Trump has paused Project Freedom, the U.S. military’s plan to help ships travel through the Strait of Hormuz, after losing the support of Saudi Arabia.