CIA Analysis Finds Iran Can Survive Trump Admin’s Strait of Hormuz Blockade for Months: Report

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A confidential new CIA analysis concludes that Iran can survive President Donald Trump‘s Strait of Hormuz blockade for at least three to four more months, according to The Washington Post.

The analysis was allegedly delivered to policymakers in the Trump administration this week, with four unnamed people familiar with the document speaking about its findings with The Post.

In addition to the fact that Iran can survive the blockade for months “before facing severe economic hardship,” the report also found that Tehran “retains significant ballistic missile capabilities.”

One official told The Washington Post that Iran has lost only 25 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers, which are designed to launch rockets or missiles, and 30 percent of its missile stockpiles.

“The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began,” The Post reported.

These intelligence findings, if accurate, contradict claims made by the Trump administration regarding the military decimation of Iran by the U.S.

“I took the country out militarily in the first four weeks,” Trump told the press from the Oval Office on April 23. “I took it out militarily. Now what we’re doing is sitting back and seeing what deal, and if they don’t make a deal, then I’ll finish it up militarily with the other 25 percent of the targets. We’ve hit 78 percent of the targets we’ve wanted to hit. We’ve knocked out their manufacturing, we’ve knocked out their missile production, we’ve knocked out their drone production, we’ve knocked out everything. In some cases, when I say knocked it out, 70, 80, 90 percent. It’s amazing what we’ve done. So, I’ve done that within that period of time that I mentioned, but I don’t want to rush myself. You know, because every source, ‘Oh, Trump is under time pressure.’ I’m not. No, no. You know who’s under time pressure? They are. Because if they don’t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode.”

While one senior U.S. official who spoke to The Post stressed that the blockade has inflicted “real, compounding damage” with Iran’s military having been “badly degraded, its navy destroyed” and its leadership in hiding, the official said the “regime’s appetite for civilian suffering” remains, “starving its own people to prolong a war it has already lost.”

Still, another official said the CIA estimates for Iran’s blockade survival might even be low.

“The leadership has gotten more radical, determined and increasingly confident they can outlast U.S. political will and sustain domestic repression to check any resistance [inside Iran],” the official told The Post. “Comparatively, you see similar regimes lasting years under sustained embargoes and airpower-only wars.”

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