CIREBON NEWS – Tehran mocked United States (US) President Donald Trump when a number of Iranian tankers managed to escape the blockade of US Navy warships.
Previously, Donald Trump claimed that Iran’s port blockade was a steel wall that was difficult for any tanker to penetrate. Even Trump has confirmed that the blockade will collapse Iran’s economy.
However, Iran was very clever to circumvent the US Navy’s blockade. Evidently, three Iranian tankers managed to return to their country by exploiting a narrow gap in Pakistani waters.
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Tehran’s state news agency IRNA reported three Iranian oil tankers had passed through what US President Donald Trump called a “steel wall”. The tanker reached Iranian ports via Pakistani waters over the past two days.
Washington imposed a naval blockade on Iran last month to strangle the country’s oil trade and pressure Tehran to agree to a deal on its nuclear program.
Iran operates ports outside the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, including Chabahar and Jask near the Pakistani border, allowing ships to reach Iranian territory via the Gulf of Oman without entering the narrow transit corridor where US naval patrols are concentrated.
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According to IRNA, empty ships belonging to Iran’s state-owned oil company, NIOC, transited through Pakistan’s exclusive economic zone before arriving at Iranian ports. Citing the TankerTrackers platform, the news agency said the tankers’ combined capacity was around 5 million barrels of crude oil.
According to the Washington Post (WaPo), a classified US intelligence assessment concluded that Iran could survive the blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship.
Although the blockade has severely disrupted the country’s crude oil exports, Tehran has reportedly used tankers as floating storage, while reducing production to maintain infrastructure.
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“Iran’s economic situation is not as dire as some claim,” a source told WaPo.
Analysts estimate that Iran currently has access to about 65-75 million barrels of floating storage capacity, equivalent to about 36-42 days of pre-war crude oil exports.
Pakistan has also opened several land transit routes connecting its ports and borders to Iran, allowing trade flows to continue.
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Although Trump has repeatedly defended the blockade’s effectiveness, claiming earlier this week that Iran’s economy was “collapsing” and describing the measure as a “steel wall” that “no one can get through,” officials in Tehran insisted the country could withstand prolonged economic pressure and continue operating despite the blockade.
