During an appearance on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing,” President Donald Trump asserted that Iran’s oil infrastructure is currently on the brink of a catastrophic failure that could materialize within the next three days.
He attributed this imminent collapse to a U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively halted the nation’s ability to export its primary commodity.
Trump further explained that while Iranian facilities continue to produce oil, the lack of viable export routes has left the surplus with nowhere to go, creating immense physical and logistical pressure on the country’s internal storage and pipeline systems.
“When you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them — they have no ships because of the blockade — what happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth,” the president said.
Trump also warned that if these detrimental failures occur, the country will have to spend vast amounts of time and money rebuilding the impacted infrastructure, and other issues could still linger.
“It’s something that happens where it just explodes. And they say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never, regardless, you can never rebuild it the way it was,” Trump said.
Analysts believe that Iran could be forced to shut down its oil fields as early as April 29th due to the blockade, which could also impact the crude production long term.
“In other words, it will always be, if you rebuild it, it’s hard to rebuild it all, but it would only be about 50% of what it is right now,” Trump said, emphasizing that he believes Iran is ‘under pressure’ because of the situation.
Forced to divert its oil to onshore tanks, Tehran is quickly running out of storage, as the tanks are only able to hold so much, since its exports have been halted.
Hellbound and Down 