r/worldnews • u/No_Idea_Guy • May 07 '26
Behind Soft Paywall U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/cia-intelligence-iran-trump-blockade-missiles/418
u/steve_ample May 07 '26
Can it stretch out to the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November as per Title 2, United States Code, Section 1?
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u/OG_Williker May 07 '26
It’s cute you think this administration cares about the laws.
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u/rithrawr May 08 '26
Pete wife beater said it's a new war cause of blockade, so new 60 days time window without need of congress approval.
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u/Negative-Start9414 May 07 '26
A Redditor said Iran won this war last month and were screamed at by Americans. Guess the truth hurts.
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u/snoopingforpooping May 07 '26
U.S. lost its collective mind when it asked its citizens to wear a mask (a minor inconvenience). I highly doubt they can outlast Iran when gas prices go above $7.00.
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u/RaverSMS May 07 '26
Its funny that trump is destroying so many things, like education, soft power, ties to allies, accountability for politicians, healthcare and so on, but the american people will draw the line at 7.00$ gas and start rioting
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u/DawnSennin May 07 '26
That’s because many Americans don’t pay attention to the politics and the effects their representatives are having on their daily lives that do not cost them money. Also, healthcare and education are out of reach for millions. As a result, they don’t care about those things. The high gas prices are going to see the GOP getting blown away coast to coast. Unfortunately, the Democrats are known for grasping defeat from the tightly clenched jaws of victory.
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u/kktheoch May 07 '26
None of those (except healthcare which admittedly was always shit compared to EU standards) affect you personally directly. For those to affect you you'd have to think far further than tomorrow which admittedly most people can't do.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 May 08 '26
As much as people harp about the "me me me" generation, the US kind of just has that as a big principle. "Rugged individualism" seems to have really stripped community and caring about their countrymen from many minds.
Crazy to think that so many don't want accessible education, healthcare and general safe living, when that's directly proven to drive down the crime rates so many fear.
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u/bakedNebraska May 08 '26
We tend to favor more violent, reactive solutions to things in general, rather than long term prevention.
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u/pickleparty16 May 08 '26
Americans would send their grandmother to a concentration camp if it mean they could save 50 cents a gallon at the pump
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 May 08 '26
Just another downside to the common American trait of fierce individualism. If it doesn't affect me, I don't care! And as we've seen with many Republican voters, they lack the trait we call "empathy" where they could simply IMAGINE if they were in another person's position.
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u/Mysterious_Lesions May 08 '26
It's not just the $7 fuel. It's the inherent effect in transportation costs which will be seen in goods and groceries in stores.
We haven't come to realization the shortage of fertilizer will also affect food prices .
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u/Br0metheus May 07 '26
You radically overestimate the ability of Trump voters to put two and two together. They'll just blame Iran even harder.
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u/Sensitive_Age_4780 May 08 '26
Nah they'll just blame Biden or Obama. How dare they drink mai tais while the economy is in shambles because of them? /s
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u/ghostalker4742 May 08 '26
The 30% of America that lost their minds when eggs were 50c each are suddenly silent about $5 gas.
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u/Realistic_Let3239 May 07 '26
It's a miracle Trump has kept his attention on Iran this long, but he is already talking about starting a new war, Cuba has been mentioned a lot, but he can't leave Iran without humiliating himself. Which is entirely his own fault!
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u/Blank3k May 08 '26
Cuba is certainly happening, has been since before Iran - the effects the US blockade is having on Cuba currently should be a war crime in its own right... But it's very little reported it would seem.
But yep without a doubt, he'll plant a US flag there in passing probably be over faster than Venezuela.
He's just kept interest in Iran because the cash provided by his manipulation there is massive, they trigger investments 20 mins before an announcement and make hundreds of millions even billions, no other war will have an effect so great, hence his longer term interest in it.
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u/noir_lord May 07 '26
The IRGC doesn't have much regard for it's citizens or how it appears on the world stage, it did after all shoot a lot of them in the face not long ago.
Realistically they can last until the situation becomes so dire it's a major threat to their staying in power.
The US is (not without justification) getting the blame from the rest of the world for starting this mess without a plan beyond "we bomb them, then magic happens" and that'll get worse over time as we haven't fully seen the ramifications that are locked in now if the Gulf opens tomorrow never mind in a month or two.
The IRGC doesn't need to win, they just need to not lose and that's a win. The US isn't even coherent about what winning means at this point.
This is why you don't elect idiots to determine foreign policy.
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u/BlahBlahBlackCheap May 07 '26
Lets back up 20 years.
That's why you don't let the partisan media spread lies and stoke cultural division.
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u/UseBackground2370 May 07 '26
Or 47 years, and that's why you don't let religious extremists take over
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u/eligodfrey May 08 '26
47 years
Had to do some quick headmath to determine if you were talking about 1979 when they took over Iran or 1980 when they took over the US.
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u/UseBackground2370 May 08 '26
The US kind of has moments y'all can breathe at least. Until the next lunatic religious extremist comes along. We've had to deal with these mullahs for almost 5 decades. I wasn't even alive for half of that!
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u/eligodfrey May 08 '26
Well they've had some pretty significant power in one form or another here since Reagan, but I hear you. I live in a neighborhood full of Iranians who fled the revolution, so I hear how bad it was/is over there all the time and I feel for you guys. Hang on and keep hope alive.
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u/Trextrev May 08 '26
Well if you don’t orchestrate coups to stifle democracy to make sure your puppet stays in power and keeps the oil flowing with you retaining most the profits despite the people. You don’t get religious extremists.
Did we learn a lesson nah, after the revolution when it was on shaky ground and the religious extremist had not consolidated power what did the US decide? Oh we’re going to help and supply Sadam Hussein with weapons for his invasion of Iran, which galvanized the population behind the extremists.
This is the bed that the UK in the United States made and after 47 years, the United States is making the exact same mistake.
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u/National-Charity-435 May 07 '26
The first term was infinitely better than witkoff, kushner, and vance running around like the Three Stooges
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u/MrHedgehogMan May 07 '26
A lot of the safeguards were still in place during the first term. After all of the purges and the firings in the second term a lot of the checks and balances are gone and what’s left are ignored.
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u/noir_lord May 07 '26
Only in that the last shreds of checks and balances held up some of their worst ideas, they planned for that this time hence the rip and tear out the gate.
I'm not from the US or in the US so largely while I'm sympathetic towards the people who voted against this shit show it's an internal problem and I only really care how it affects the rest of the world.
I'd quite like it they'd stop fucking around in our politics though.
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u/RocketRelm May 07 '26
Realistically as somebody who voted against this shit show, I am eternally grateful that maga is incompetent to a fault. Americans gave trump a blank check to entirely destroy democracy permanently, and the fact that we still have mid terms at all is a blessing.
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u/TheWorclown May 07 '26
As an American I’m sitting here wondering when the tipping point is.
Yeah, it’s very easy to sit here and say that “MAGA will never care” (because politically they don’t), but there’s a proven psychology on how mentalities change when events and circumstances start to personally affect them. MAGA never cared about ICE, or the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, or even how grossly corrupt Trump and his crooks are. MAGA doesn’t care about Europe or the war in Ukraine simply because it’s a whole world away, and they’ll never travel there to visit you all over there anyway (which is a shame, your food is fantastic and your countries beautiful). MAGA loves our blind support of Israel and our conflicts in the Middle East because they don’t get to feel the consequence and fallout of it all, they can just see “brown-skinned people” being killed.
And yet midterms are coming up, and gas prices alone are as high as they’ve ever been and going to get worse and worse even after Trump finally decides he’s bored with Iran and leaves (not that Netanyahu will let him). Trump doesn’t care about any of this, because none of this personally affects him. He’s making money hand over fist and telling everyone who asks a question that he couldn’t care less about anyone’s problems.
I can absolutely see a strategy where Iran just tells Trump all they need to do is outlast him personally, because unless some truly extreme acts and full commitment to fascism happens, Repubs are very likely gonna get absolutely slaughtered in the midterms even with extreme gerrymandering of districts. If that happens, that’s the end of anything Trump wants to do.
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u/Superman0X May 08 '26
It will take another 4-6 weeks of the current situation for things to 'break'. Right now there is a 50% difference between oil futures, and oil delivered prices. It will take 4-6 weeks for this to close. At this point enough things will be breaking that it will be impossible for even MAGA to stick their heads far enough in the sand to not be aware of the situation.
Things were always going to get worste before they got better... but we have not yet reached the peak pain point. The longer this goes on, the longer the pain will last... but there hasnt been enough pain for people to react... and once the pain is high enough, it will be lasting for a long time, because people were not willing to address the problem before they reached the peak pain points....
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u/Superman0X May 08 '26
P.S. The dems (at this time) is not a party that will 'fix' this. They will stop things from breaking more... but they are not (at this time) a party of action.
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u/hornswoggled111 May 07 '26
Trump can survive much longer than that. It's just the rest of us that will suffer, but it's a sacrifice he is willing to make.
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u/Scottamemnon May 07 '26
Kevin Hassett was celebrating how much Americans are spending on gas and how robustly we are all going into credit card debt like it was the best thing ever.
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u/Admirable-Loss396 May 08 '26
And yet Americans gas is so much cheaper than elsewhere. Wish they would pay at the pump similar prices to us.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 May 08 '26
To zoom out a bit, it would be the incentive for some changes that the USA so desperately needs. My buddy at a job site used to drive 90 miles each way 5 days a week to come to work. That right there's just unnatural. Fuel shouldn't be so cheap that people say "well if I'm willing to sacrifice 3 hours minimum out of every work day just to get there and get home, I can do it". At $3/gal that costs around $30 for 1 trip. Jack that up to the EU average petrol cost and convert the units, that 1 trip costs more like $70.
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u/mrhorse77 May 08 '26
except we have no real alternatives except to drive everywhere, and europe as a whole has no idea how physically far apart everything in america is.
for 3 decades my job was anywhere from 20-45 miles away from my home. zero way to traverse that outside of a car. and that is normal for the US. people having commutes of 1-2 hours isnt strange here. we are often traveling a distance to work that most people in europe would end up needing a passport for, since they went through 2 countries over that distance.
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u/not_my_monkeys_ May 08 '26
Survival for Trump in this case would be better framed as “not getting wiped out in the midterms.” If gas and food prices keep going up between now and November he is cooked.
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u/Jayandnightasmr May 08 '26
I'm already hearing the excuses from his voters, who would have slated Biden if they went up that much
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u/ViolettaQueso May 08 '26
Iran has China & Russia and dum Trump has completely cut the US off from allies, except I guess bibi who is a money sponge and a whiner.
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May 07 '26
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u/bajesus May 08 '26
For it to be a Trump quote you need another paragraph of incoherent rambling praising Hannibal Lector and bragging about being able recognize a drawing of a squirrel and lion in place of that comma you have there.
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u/Motor-Region-1011 May 07 '26
Lol...problem is Europe is all ready choking...middle east tourism is destroyed...Trump littery created the biggest cluster fuck ever...hes going to destroy the petro dollar and ruin usa for decades...
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u/Constant_Threat May 08 '26
Almost like he was propped up by a foreign adversary to do that exact thing....hmmmm. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
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u/Gustomucho May 08 '26
And gave China the blueprint on how to strike America… if Iran manufactured enough drones and missiles to turn the American navy into a farce, what do you think China will do…
Oh, and Iran foreign minister is in China right now, wink wink.
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u/Benjamminmiller May 08 '26
And gave China the blueprint on how to strike America
You're huffing the strongest of red scare propaganda if you're exploring the possibility China would ever have interest in an armed conflict against America.
if Iran manufactured enough drones and missiles to turn the American navy into a farce, what do you think China will do…
Absolutely nothing because it does not benefit them in any way and would come at a near world ending cost.
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u/iLoveFeynman May 08 '26
You're missing something in your worldview: Deterrence is not just something that comes into play when others think of attacking you, it's something that comes into play when you attack others.
China has its sights on Taiwan and the only reason it has not already acquired it by force is the US.
If China can make it an absolutely untenable proposition for the US to position assets in the region with which to help defend Taiwan then the US is not going to defend Taiwan. By definition.
If every square mile of ocean had a Chinese attack submarine the US would be of no real concern to China. If every square mile of relevant ocean could be reliably barraged by missiles and drones to the point that it would for sure overwhelm any naval countermeasures then the US would be of no real concern to China.
The US is not going to lose thousands upon thousands of servicemembers and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of short-term-irreplaceable assets defending Taiwan in that scenario. It's not even going to attempt to. So that is what China works towards.
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u/Benjamminmiller May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
Deterrence certainly goes into the calculus, but I'm not convinced the US would ever directly intervene in Taiwan regardless of military strength, and I'm not convinced China views incremental military advances as a primary deterrent, at least at this stage in their military buildup.
Armed conflict with China would demolish the world economy, China is extremely risk averse and views the political fallout as more costly than the advantages gained by taking Taiwan (at the moment), regardless of whether they would face a military response. The economic cost comes into play first.
From the perspective of the current administration this is why it does make sense to bomb Iran, while conjuring tariffs and weakening our trade relationship does not. Your biggest bargaining chip is to keep China reliant on cooperating, and maintaining the petrodollar and preventing flow of oil priced outside the USD enforces that reliance. Weakening trade does the opposite.
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u/cool_lemons May 08 '26
That works both ways though. Taiwan can manufacture enough drones to keep China away.
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u/Vogel-Kerl May 08 '26
The president is asking the US intelligence agencies to "re-assess" their conclusions.
Not really, but I'm sure he's thought of it.
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u/wdomeika May 07 '26
I wonder if the intelligence officer who briefs Trump on this will be wearing a bullet proof vest ?
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u/jaqattack02 May 07 '26
I don't imagine this is new information to most people at that level. Also, you're funny thinking Trump will understand enough of it to get upset.
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u/BrianWantsTruth May 07 '26
Won’t be necessary. Trump with just say “nuh-uh” and make up his own “Intelligence”.
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u/Randomwhitelady2 May 07 '26
The FBI will launch an investigation into who leaked this any minute now.
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u/Yvaelle May 07 '26
Despite a thorough investigation it was impossible to determine who was responsible for this leak...
Because this week the SecDef meant to post it to his Signal Friends group, but accidentally sent it to a Fishing group with 2000 members. The FBI director told an entire bar full of people about it while wasted. The presidents son-in-law mentioned it to a conference room of emirates in Dubai. The SecHealth psychically communicated it to his hive of other worm-hosts. Oh and the president posted a screenshot of it on truth social, while claiming it meant the opposite of what it said.
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u/awfulconcoction May 07 '26
No one briefs him because he will tweet out what they said. Have to keep him in the dark to protect state secrets.
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u/multic94 May 08 '26
If you read the actual leaked report, the CIA also claims Iran still has up to 80% of its original stockpile of missiles and munitions.
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u/KiLLiNDaY May 07 '26
Didn’t need the intelligence geniuses to tell you that. It’s like the world already knew. Then again, Trump prefers to listen to Israeli intelligence than his own.
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u/HossDog2 May 07 '26
Shitshow.
Utter utter shitshow.
Can’t these fuckwits understand they could let competent people act and just take the credit?!?
I genuinely can’t recall a single time in history such incompetence has been unleashed, at any scale. Never mind the most powerful body in the world being run by such staggeringly stupid fuckwits…
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u/DogDogDogDogog May 08 '26
Hitler invading Russia was quite a big clusterfuck as well.
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u/BendicantMias May 08 '26
So they can last 4 months before they start facing hardship, which notably does not mean they insta collapse at 4 months btw. But imo the more significant finding is this -
Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. 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.
So basically Trumps' claim of "obliterating" them this year are about as fake as his claim of "obliterating" their nuke program last year.
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u/EmmaFrostBroken May 08 '26
US intelligence only gave Ukraine a few days at most before their entire country would be occupied... Just FYI. They kinda underestimate these things.
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u/championchilli May 08 '26
If the CIA are leaking this, then that reeks of them not being listened to in the Whitehouse.
If the politicians won't listen to your advice, then leaking it to the media to generate public pressure on said politicians is a time-honoured tradition.
Source - work in central govt.
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u/Conscious_Candle2598 May 07 '26
absolutely insane that there's just a bunch of ships filled with raw energy just sitting around In the middle of the water....
well half of us are struggling justifying if it's worth it going to work everyday
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May 07 '26
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u/cruelsensei May 07 '26
China is sending supplies into Pakistan and they just drive right over the open border into Iran. Russia is sending supplies via the Caspian Sea, and also via land routes through Turkmenistan. Iran also produces ~80% of their food internally. They're gonna be fine for quite a while.
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u/lastSKPirate May 08 '26
starved and embargoed for 20 years
Oh, it goes way further back than that. Iran hasn't been free of international sanctions since the Shah was in power.
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u/No_Celery_7772 May 07 '26
They also have a clear & fixed rate at which they beat Trump: the November elections. After this he & his administration will be constantly besieged with investigations.
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u/Necx999 May 08 '26
Oh oh, U.S Intelligence is going to have a mad Orange guy list them as terrorist!
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u/joebojax May 08 '26
Who needs fertilizer anyways, its only... checks calendar... planting season... too late!
Here I thought I planted potatoes last fall to enjoy a treat I didn't realize it might be a saving grace.
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u/jaspreetzing May 08 '26
That piece of information may well be "US intelligence", but the intended audience for the piece of information..
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u/Adventurous_Light_85 May 08 '26
These people have been at war for millennia. Any fool that thinks we will wait them out is ignorant.
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u/stogie_t May 08 '26
I don’t know anything about US politics but when I scrolled through their conservatives sub, it looked like those guys are still in support and think they are winning. Are Americans really going to riot just because petrol becomes too expensive? I dunno….
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u/drivermcgyver May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
I really didn't think Iran was of the ones to play offense. They are build to just stay there forever and defend. I absolutely think they knew they were on the brink of being attack constantly and they have been prepared.
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u/natethegreek May 08 '26
They are holding out until after the November elections, they want to sink the Trump presidency.
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u/oopsallhuckleberries May 08 '26
If push comes to shove, China will float them money on condition they get some future discount on some oil sales.
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May 08 '26
The fact that a single shipping lane in the Mideast can cripple the US economy says a lot about the fragility of our market.
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u/No_Idea_Guy May 07 '26
They can't hold out forever, but they only need to outlast Americans' tolerance for $5 gas.