Iran juggles oil cuts and storage strain to resist U.S. blockade

As the US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz tightens around Iran’s oil trade, exports have plunged in recent weeks and storage is rapidly filling. Already, the country has begun curbing production, according to a senior Iranian official. But there’s a crucial caveat Washington may be underestimating: Tehran has decades of experience preparing for versions of this exact scenario. The war in the Middle East is entering a stalemate, with both sides waiting for the other to relent. By targeting the Islamic Republic’s most vital source of revenue, President Donald Trump is seeking to force an end to a conflict that has reshaped geopolitics and global energy markets. Yet Iran has shown some resilience in weathering the blockade so far, drawing on a time-tested playbook to prolong the standoff and raise costs for Washington by pushing up oil prices, which reached a four-year high this week. Tehran is proactively reducing crude output in a move to stay ahead of capacity limits rather than waiting for tanks to fill completely, according to the senior official, who asked not to be identified because the information is sensitive. And engineers have learned how to idle wells without lasting damage and restart them quickly, officials say, after years of sanctions and shutdowns pushed the country’s oil industry through cycles of disruption. “We have enough expertise and experience,” said Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Association. “We’re not worried.” Those techniques, learned over multiple wars and sanctions regimes, were honed during the first Trump administration, when the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed sanctions that forced Tehran to slash production. Over the longer term, the curbs proved far from a death knell, with the country’s production rising in subsequent years. There are, of course, key differences between then and now. Amid Western sanctions, Tehran has in the past sold oil