According to the Middle East Monitor, the pressure campaign Washington hoped would rapidly squeeze Iran into a corner is proving far more complicated than early predictions suggested.
A month after the United States imposed a naval blockade targeting Iran’s oil exports, Tehran’s economy is under strain, but not collapse. According to a report by NBC News, Iran appears capable of absorbing the shock for months without triggering the kind of catastrophic economic breakdown some US officials had forecast.
The blockade has trapped dozens of Iranian tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a critical export route and forcing Iran to slow production. Yet analysts say the country’s energy system, hardened by years of sanctions and isolation was built with this kind of pressure in mind.
President Donald Trump had earlier warned that Iran’s oil network could unravel within days if exports stopped entirely.
“If they don’t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode,” Trump said.
That scenario has not materialised.
Instead, Iran has gradually reduced the amount of crude moving through its terminals while redirecting part of its production for domestic refining and consumption. Energy experts say that strategy could help Tehran avoid widespread shutdowns, even as storage capacity tightens.
“They’re going to have to shut down about half of their production. They can keep producing because they can refine it domestically,” said Robin Mills of Qamar Energy consulting and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
The bigger picture may be even more significant for Washington. Analysts argue the blockade is testing whether economic pressure alone can force a quick political outcome in Iran, something decades of sanctions have rarely achieved.
Gregory Brew of the Eurasia Group said Iran has already navigated similar production cuts under previous sanctions regimes.
“I don’t think it’s going to do tremendous damage to their infrastructure,” Brew said. “They know how to do this. They’ve done it before.”
According to Brew, Iran has already reduced weekly tanker loading volumes from roughly 11 million barrels to between six and eight million, signalling a controlled slowdown rather than a system in freefall.
