The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Blockade of Iran Begins || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

The blockade of Iran has officially begun. The first day was a bit slow, but this remains a monumental move by the U.S. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4sH96SF

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Hey all, Peter Zine here coming from Colorado. We are on April 15 now, and so happy tax day. But it also means that we're in the second full day of the American blockade of the Persian Gulf. Specifically, the United States has said that any ship that is planning to dock at any Iranian port or is coming from any Iranian port is not allowed passage. And naval assets, at least in theory, are in position to potentially board vessels. that decide to run the blockade. In the first day, no one really tried. Really, only one ship came through ignoring the blockade. The United States didn't do anything, but it was the first day.

So, you know, whatever, that could mean anything. Moving forward, what the Trump administration has done is really, for the first time in the conflict, actually put a price on the powers that be in Iran. You see, when the first waves of attacks went in, and the bulk of the Iranian leadership, was killed. Yes, that killed the current decision makers, but when you've got a political class of mullahs, it's 10,000 people, power just went to the next wave. And when it comes to operating in a war scenario, the people who are making the decisions were the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Hmm. These guys operate differently, because they don't necessarily garner their power from

control of the military or the economy or taxes. Most of their income comes from either oil sales directly or smuggling. So when you're looking to punish these people, the attacks that the United States and Israel did for five weeks did very, very little to actually hurt them. It destroyed large portions of the above-ground Iranian economy, and in a normal state situation, that could have been crushing. But those weren't the people that were running the military strategy at the time or now. By blockading the ports, however, the 2 million barrels a day that the IRGC was able to export has now gone to zero. And their ability to import product to then control smuggling networks has gone to zero as well.

So whether or not this is on purpose or not, the White House has stumbled across a strategy that actually puts pressure on the people who need to be pressured. There are still a thousand questions about how this will be done, whether it really will be done or just a truth social post. but the fact that the assets are actually in place now is promising. That promising, however, doesn't mean it's going to work. Promising doesn't mean that it's going to be sustained long enough to make a difference, and that doesn't mean that it comes with no side effects. Because if you really do start pressuring these people, they will strike. And these are the people who control the bulk of the Iranian missile fleets and all of the drones,

and have demonstrated over and over and over again that they have more than enough capacity to strike any energy asset on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. That's the west side. Anyway, the other reason that the blockade seems to me to be a necessary move is hardware. The Iranians don't have a huge manufacturing base, and almost all of the parts and all of their missiles and all of their drones come from China. And we were in this weird situation throughout the war where the Chinese could ship whatever components in.

Iran could import whatever components they wanted, but the strait was shut down to Allied shipping. Now we're in a situation where that seems to have finally flipped. There's still plenty of drones, thousands of drones, maybe tens of thousands of drones, in Iran, so it's hardly a short cutoff, but it does matter. Now, there are two things to keep in mind and to watch for in the days ahead. First of all, maintaining a blockade on the Persian Gulf is pretty easy. You put a few ships across the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.

You can see everything without any sophisticated equipment. That's the easy part. But Iran does have one port Chabahar that is out east in the Gulf of Oman where it turns into the Arabian Sea, just shy of the Pakistani border. Chabahar would require a separate naval blockade in order to prevent access. And that means Americans splitting its forces. Otherwise, you can ship in containers full of drones to Chabahar and they can be trucked elsewhere in the country. Second, there's nothing about the northern or eastern borders of Iran that can be blockaded because it's land. So the Chinese could rail or truck stuff through Pakistan or Central Asia into northern or eastern Iran and get things in that way.

Now, that takes longer, that is much more expensive. If they started that process today, the first new components aren't going to arrive in Iran for about three weeks. And there's a lot of things can go down in three weeks in a situation where basically both sides have been negotiating and in bad faith since the very beginning. of this process. But those are the things to watch. The naval side of this for the United States is actually pretty straightforward, even if it does require an extra task force to cover Chattahar. But there we are. So next steps, watch those two places, watch to see a second phase of negotiations, watch to see if either side is willing to give in or not. I think we're well past the point where Donald Trump can simply declare victory and go home because if he does that,

he basically hands Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz, allows them to continue to continue to continue supporting militant groups throughout the United States. Basically, the United States would be in a worse position in that scenario in the aftermath of the war than it was before. And so many people are now saying that among the Republican Party that I think it really has sunk in. It doesn't mean that there's a good strategy here. But if there is a path to pressuring Iran to do something different, you have to have

to hit the interests of the IRGC and so far the blockade is the first thing the United States has done that has done that.