Yet another intelligence assessment that contradicts the rosy predictions of U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration has been leaked to major news media. “A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war,” the Washington Post reported on May 7, citing four people it says are familiar with the document. “The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.
“Iran retains about 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70% 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.”
The Post notes that Trump painted a rosier picture in Oval Office remarks on Wednesday, May 6, saying of Iran: “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have probably 18%, 19%, but not a lot by comparison to what they had.”
