Militarily, “Iran retains about 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70% of its prewar stockpiles of missiles,” the Post added. “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.”
Drop Site News’ Murtaza Hussain responded that if this assessment along with a previous one from the Center for Strategic and International Studies about “remaining US munitions and interceptor capacity are even approximately correct, it goes a long way to explaining why Trump seems so eager to end the war whereas the Iranians have either dug in or escalated their negotiating positions. The missile math of continuing the conflict would be much more favorable to the Iranians, especially if the war continued for a significant time.”
“Prior to the war, interceptor capacity compared to the size of the Iranian missile stockpile seemed like the most rationally incontrovertible reason to avoid fighting such a conflict, even for people who found it politically desirable,” he added. “This also might explain why the US and Israel pivoted towards the end to threatening countervalue strikes against civilian targets if attempts to destroy the underground missile cities by air were ineffective.”
The Post’s reporting came one month into a fragile ceasefire and starkly contrasts the recent framing of conditions in Iran from President Donald Trump and others in his administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) responded to the Post’s reporting by quoting Hegseth, who said in March that “never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective.”
Murphy declared: “They lied through their teeth. Just straight up fabricated shit.”
Still, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stuck to the administration’s framing in a Thursday statement to the Post.
“During Operation Epic Fury, Iran was crushed militarily,” Kelly said. “Now, they are being strangled economically by Operation Economic Fury and losing $500 million per day thanks to the United States military’s successful blockade of Iranian ports. The Iranian regime knows full well their current reality is not sustainable, and President Trump holds all the cards as negotiators work to make a deal.”
Meanwhile, some experts were unsurprised that the CIA privately delivered a “sober” assessment contradicting the administration’s public commentary on the conflict—which it now claims is no longer an active “war,” seemingly to dodge a key congressional deadline.
“Nice to know that a confidential CIA analysis is confirming what close observers of the Iranian economy have been saying publicly for weeks! Intelligent policymakers rely on intelligence. But Trump jeopardized diplomacy by instigating a blockade that was never going to work,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Europe and founder of the think tank Bourse & Bazaar Foundation.
Sharing the reporting on social media, Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, wrote: “As I argued a week into the U.S. blockade, Iran can hold out for months without economic collapse. The costs for the US and the world are increasingly unsustainable, however.”
Earlier this week, Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the US government spent $71.8 billion on the Iran War during its first 60 days, an average of $1.2 billion daily. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that the conflict could cause a global recession.
Last Friday, Trump responded to the War Powers Act’s 60-day deadline by claiming to Congress that his war—which already violated US and international law—had been “terminated.” The White House said at the time that no fire had been exchanged since April 7, when a ceasefire deal was reached just hours after the president issued a genocidal threat against the Iranian people.
However, on Thursday evening, United States Central Command announced that Iran “launched multiple missiles, drones, and small boats” at American warships. CENTCOM added that it “eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance nodes.”
