U.S. Naval Blockade Dries Up Iran Oil Revenues, Stockpile Could Exhaust By Mid-October

Iran’s oil revenues are rapidly drying up as a U.S. naval blockade prevents new crude shipments from leaving the Persian Gulf and the stockpile already positioned outside the blockade dwindles toward exhaustion, the Wall Street Journal reported via Ynetnews.Y

“No Iranian crude has crossed the blockade since the U.S. Navy reinstated it in mid-July”

Ynetnews

Ynetnews, citing Kpler, said no Iranian crude has crossed the blockade since the U.S. YNavy reinstated it in mid-July and that Iranian crude already aboard vessels beyond the blockade has fallen from roughly 90 million barrels in mid-July to about 29 million.

Al-Manar TV Lebanon

Kpler estimates that if deliveries continue at their current pace, mostly to China, that floating stockpile could be exhausted by mid-October, and payments for cargoes already delivered could largely dry up by mid-December.

The squeeze is hitting Iran six months into the war, as the rial weakens, inflation surges and the economy contracts, with oil typically financing about one-third of the state budget and also helping fund the military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The pressure also appears to be forcing Iran to reduce production, with Kpler’s Homayoun Falakshahi saying domestic inventories have not risen significantly despite the collapse in exports, suggesting Tehran has cut output closer to what it needs for domestic consumption.

Iran’s acting defence minister, Brigadier General Majid Ibn Reza, rejected U.S. claims that Iran lacks the capability to target warships enforcing what Tehran calls an economic siege, speaking in an interview with an IRIB reporter on Monday.

In that exchange, the reporter noted, “The Americans believe that we do not have the capability and technology to target the warships participating in the economic blockade against our people,” and Ibn Reza replied, “God willing, you will see, you will see the results.”

CNN

Iran’s posture is also being framed as a shift toward broader economic confrontation, with Iran’s parliament speaker and head of its negotiating team Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf telling Washington that “the rules of the game have changed” after attacks involving Iranian and US-linked shipping.

Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee member Ebrahim Rezaei said Iran would respond forcefully to US naval vessels, equipment, destroyers and bases “anywhere,” while Mojtaba Zarei warned that the withdrawal of US warships from the range of Iranian ballistic missiles would not end the confrontation.

The same reporting said Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei told state television on Sunday night that Iran considered the Strait closed and would establish a new “prohibited zone” outside the waterway, with ships entering it to reach the Strait potentially subject to sanctions.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council leader Mohsen Rezaei said Tehran plans to announce an “exclusion zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz aimed at vessels it believes are attempting to transit the waterway, with the zone beginning from the line of the U.S. naval blockade and extending toward the Strait of Hormuz.

“Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list”

PBS

Rezaei said, “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list,” while the U.S. military said over 20 warships are supporting the blockade and that as of Sunday it had redirected 92 commercial ships and disabled three.

The PBS report also said Iran continues to attack some ships trying to transit the strait, and that Iran earlier Sunday said it struck an unmanned U.S. vessel trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz, a claim the U.S. military dismissed as a “total lie.”

CNN described the broader stakes as Washington’s economic pressure campaign pushing Iran toward military escalation and a wider war, noting that Mohsen Rezaei said on Sunday that “new strategies must be adopted in the war, in negotiations, and in confronting the blockade.”C

CNN added that Rezaei suggested Iran could expand its own blockade by introducing a new “exclusion zone” in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, while also quoting Trump’s claim that he has “almost total control of the Hormuz Strait” and that Iran is “playing out the inevitable.”C