Top Trump administration official says US is able to get 8-9 million barrels of oil out of the Persian Gulf, while Iran’s exports have fallen to zero.
By World Israel News Staff
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Monday that Iran is currently exporting no oil at all, portraying the US naval blockade as having effectively severed one of Tehran’s most important sources of revenue as the Trump administration intensifies pressure on the Islamic Republic.
“Iran’s exports today are zero barrels of oil per day,” Wright said during an appearance on Fox News. “The United States military is bringing out 8 or 9 million barrels of oil per day.”
Wright was referring to US efforts to prevent Iranian oil shipments from leaving the Persian Gulf while helping other regional producers move crude through or around the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway at the center of the months-long confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Iran “can’t export any oil right now,” he continued, and argued that the resulting economic pressure gives President Donald Trump considerable leverage to wait for Tehran to accept US demands.
“I think he does,” Wright said when asked whether Trump had the ability to wait Iran out. “The president is playing the long game.”
If sustained, the near-total cutoff would represent an extraordinary decline for a country that was exporting roughly 1.7 million barrels of crude and condensate per day before the war.
Iran had relied overwhelmingly on China to purchase its oil despite years of US sanctions.
Independent shipping data broadly supports Wright’s claim that new Iranian exports have been brought close to a standstill, although the precise volume is difficult to verify because Iranian tankers have frequently used opaque ownership structures, ship-to-ship transfers and disabled tracking equipment.
Iranian exports had already collapsed after the US Navy began enforcing a blockade on April 13.
Vortexa estimated that exports fell from nearly 1.9 million barrels per day in March to 1.34 million in April and just 209,000 barrels per day in May. Kpler put May exports at roughly 260,000 barrels per day.
The blockade was temporarily lifted in mid-June as Washington and Tehran reached an interim agreement intended to end the war.
The US also issued a temporary sanctions waiver permitting Iranian oil sales, allowing tankers to begin moving crude out of Iranian waters again.
That opening proved short-lived.
The June agreement unraveled amid a dispute over control of the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington subsequently reimposed its blockade.
US officials said last week that Iran’s primary source of hard currency was again being cut off.
The 60-day period established under the June memorandum expired Monday without a broader peace agreement, and Trump said the United States was not seeking to extend it.
Iran, meanwhile, threatened to adopt a “fully offensive” posture and said it could launch military action to break the US blockade if diplomacy fails.
Washington has signaled that the economic squeeze could now become considerably more severe.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the Navy is capable of maintaining the blockade for as long as necessary.
“Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to,” Hegseth said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately promised another escalation of US economic measures against Tehran.
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country,” Bessent said.
Wright’s assertion that the US military is helping move “8 or 9 million barrels” of oil per day out of the region is more disputed than his claim about Iran’s exports.
The energy secretary made a similar claim last week, saying the seven-day average of oil leaving through the Strait of Hormuz had risen to nearly 9 million barrels per day and that additional pipeline and export routes had brought total regional flows to roughly 15 million barrels per day.
Commercial tanker-tracking services have recorded substantially lower volumes.
Kpler calculated crude exports through Hormuz at 1.74 million barrels per day for the week beginning August 3, while its four-week average for total Middle Eastern crude exports stood at 12.26 million barrels per day.
LSEG Oil Research put regional exports during the first 12 days of August at 9.33 million barrels per day.
The discrepancy could partly reflect shipments not visible to commercial tracking systems, differences in methodology or the counting of ship-to-ship transfers.
Wright has maintained that US military monitoring gives the government a more complete picture of traffic than publicly available vessel-tracking systems.
Whatever the exact total, shipping through Hormuz remains far below normal levels. Before the war, roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies passed through the strait, with 130 to 140 ships transiting the waterway daily.
The disruption has contributed to sharply higher energy costs.
Brent crude settled at $90.87 per barrel Monday after reaching as high as $126 during the conflict, while average US regular gasoline prices have climbed above $4.06 per gallon, nearly 30% higher than a year earlier.
Trump acknowledged the political and economic cost last week, telling supporters that Americans may have to accept higher fuel prices as part of the effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Wright said Monday that Trump was asking Americans to “bear with him.”
“We’re going to continually get better at escorting traffic out,” he said, “and the power of Iran is going to continue to shrink.”
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