U.S. imposes sanctions on Iran's Strait of Hormuz authority | Miad Maleki | CNN International

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Time now for the exchange and joining me from Washington is Miad Maliki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former senior US Treasury official. Miad, it's good to have you on. Um, there is talk now about a potential deal, anou uh that's uh soon to be agreed to perhaps by both sides, but we've been here before. And in the meantime, we've continued to see escalatory strikes from both sides as well. Um the blockade not sanctions as we know is actually what's choking Iran off at this point. If a narrow deal over the straight of Ormuse includes reopening of shipping does that not benefit Iran more than the US would get ultimately especially since the US is just viewing this as part one of two parts of a deal.

[00:00:53]>> Thanks for having me and that's I couldn't agree more. I mean that's you know when you look at the details of this memorandum of agreement is really agreeing to negotiate over the most critical aspects of the problems that the US and the west has with Iran. So at this point we're lifting um our most important and most effective uh leverage that we have with Iran, the the blockade and and you know you know I said this before the closure of a straight of foremost targeted Iran's own economy more than any other countries in the region in the around the globe. So they also need the closure of a straight for to come to an end. They're not be they're not able to import. They're not able to export. they're having a dire economy and you know the the state of economy is extremely chaotic right now domestically and as the internet has slowly come back on uh it we're seeing a very a much better picture of how how bad their state of economy is. So by lifting the blockade and then agreeing to negotiate over the most critical and tricky aspects of our problems with Iran, with this regime, we're probably giving them a chance to go back to their playbook of dragging their feet, waiting out administrations, waiting out media attention to this issue, and then just engaging us in a long-term um kind of set of negotiations. And it's very clear that it's also very difficult for them to come to a decision on these very important issues.

[00:02:26]>> Miad, it was about six weeks ago that you told me Iran was two weeks away from being able to store its oil with permanent damage to extraction and an inability to pay salaries without selling petroleum, petrochemicals and metals, etc. That window has passed long now. Um, and Iran is still fighting.

[00:02:46]It's still firing missiles. So looking back, did you underestimate Iran? Is it the shadow fleet? Is it the offshore storage? Or perhaps it's just the regime's tolerance to pain?

[00:03:00]>> No, it's a mix of both. Now, the tolerance to pain and also the way that the blockade has been enforced. Listen, in the case of a real blockade, you know, when the blockade was announced, a blockade similar to what we had in Venezuela, when you have no ships go in, no ships come out, meaning the oil is not being loaded on tankers and uh there's no there are no um uh tankers that are leaving. uh in that case Iran you know the key the key here is after threatening the the um the international community for 47 years that they're going to close this right off they didn't think about that they need to think about their own uh storage capacity oil storage capacity so they only have 13 days of oil storage capacity you know tankare you can't really call tankare and storage is costly you have to have crew on the ship you have to run your systems you have to refuel Um but what happened with this blockade the way that it was positioned outside this road of for mos they kept buying themselves time with this uh empty tankers that they found and it started loading some empty tankers ended up actually crossing the blockade and getting into international to Persian Gulf waters from the international waters. So um so they actually started buying time but then right now where we are we see clear reports of they have significantly dropped their oil extraction already. Now uh the oil industry and oil sector is very well controlled by the regime. It's is fully controlled by the regime. So it's difficult to get actual accurate numbers of how many um you know oil wells that might have shut in already um where they really stand as far as extraction level.

[00:04:42]I've seen numbers around 500 to 700 um,000 barrels of um oil oil daily extraction of oil that they have to they had to drop. So that's that's pretty significant. And the the domestic refining capacity has also dropped because of their strikes. So um there also see reports that Khark Island storage has been already full. You saw the secretary of treasury coming out today and confirming that the Kark Island apparently that the storage has reached the full capacity there. But but that's more of a longer term issue they're going to have to deal with. The the the real problem they're going to have is the gasoline shortage and also the the the really the foreign currency market domestic domestically that that they're going to run out of foreign currency in the market. So it is they're sitting on an economic thinking bomb and and that's probably why uh they agreed to actually negotiate with the same countries that killed layers and layers of their political leaders. So given all of those constraints that Iran is facing, does and we don't know the full details of what a potential would look like, but from what we know thus far, would this help Iran? Would this provide them more of a lifeline if the president does agree to it?

[00:05:58]>> Absolutely. I mean if the blockade is lifted and they quickly go back to open up to foremost which I think they will have to open up to foremost if even if we we don't have a deal as soon as we lift the blockade I think they're going to have to open up to foremost because it's not about the US and Israel they need to reestablish their diplomatic relationship with their Gulf partners they need to reestablish their relationship with South Koreans with Indians with Indians with with with the Chinese and they're going to have to open up their foremost for the sake of their own economy. Um, but yes, if there's no blockade, they can get oil out. They can get catalyst that they need for metals production, petrochemical production, gasoline production. If they can go back to importing the critical goods that they need, yes, it's going to give regime more time, as I said, to go back to their uh old old uh and common playbook of really dragging us into negotiations that could could go on for a while.

[00:06:54]>> Yeah. But a new level of leverage that they've learned that they have is control over the straight of Hormuz, which was always a hypothetical before this war three months ago and now it's proven to be a reality and something that they continue to to hold over the United States and the rest of the world.

[00:07:10]Uh, in essence, Miad Maliki, thank you so much. Good to see you. Appreciate the time.