CIA says Iran has 70 percent of pre-war missiles, can ride out blockade for months: Report

Iran can withstand the US naval blockade against it for three or four more months before facing severe economic hardship, the CIA told the Trump administration this week, according to a report by The Washington Post on Thursday.

The report also said the CIA has found that Tehran retains “significant ballistic missile capabilities” after weeks of Israeli and US bombardment.

The CIA report flies in the face of public statements by the Trump administration, which has claimed that the vast majority of Iran’s drone and missile capabilities have been destroyed.

The Washington Post cited a US official saying that Iran has 75 percent of its pre-war inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its pre-war stockpiles of missiles. Iran has also managed to reopen its underground missile storage facilities.

“Their missiles are mostly decimated. They have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Trump and his top advisors have insisted for weeks that Iran has been destroyed by US and Israeli strikes despite the Islamic Republic demonstrating its command and control is intact and it can still conduct attacks at will.

“Operation Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come,” US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in early April.

Just this week, Iran unleashed more than a dozen missiles and drones on the UAE in retaliation against the US trying to send a warship through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran also said it hit a US warship, although the White House denied the claim.

The Trump administration has made similar claims about its naval blockade that have failed to materialise.

“Something happens where it just explodes,” Trump told Fox News last week, referring to Iran’s oil infrastructure. “They say they have only three days left before that happens. When it explodes, you can never rebuild it the way it was.”  

The US has said that Iran is running out of storage space for its oil and that the build-up of oil could collapse its old energy infrastructure. 

Analysts have told Middle East Eye that Iran has “weeks” of storage space left.

Energy analytics firm Kpler told the New York Times on Wednesday that Iran has 25 to 30 days before it runs out of storage. 

The CIA analysis cited by The Washington Post provided an even longer timeline before Iran would face a wider economic crunch from the blockade.

The intelligence agency estimated that Tehran could wait out the embargo for 90 to 120 days before facing “severe economic” hardship.

Both the US and Iran are imposing blockades in the Strait of Hormuz to assert control over the strategic waterway. Iran has been unable to send its oil tankers out of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, but it has also prevented Gulf states from exporting.

While Iran uses the sea to export nearly all of its oil, it is not reliant on the Strait of Hormuz to conduct general trade with neighbouring states.

Iran shares the Caspian Sea with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and Azerbaijan. It also shares land borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan.

For critical supplies like food, Iran is considered 80 percent self-sufficient.