Trump bets on quick Iran oil crunch. Experts see prolonged pain and rising costs.

A gas station on the 5000 block of Connecticut Ave NW in Washington as Americans continue to feel the squeeze from rising fuel costs driven by global oil disruptions linked to the Iran war. | Dave Toomey for POLITICO

Trump bets on quick Iran oil crunch. Experts see prolonged pain and rising costs.

Politico-April30th2026

By Scott Waldman04/30/2026 05:19 PM EDT

The Trump administration insists that its naval blockade is putting the squeeze on Iran and that the regime is just a “matter of days” away from an energy crisis unless it capitulates.

Energy experts are skeptical and say the White House is misreading both the timing of the harm to the Iranian oil industry as well as the regime’s tolerance for pain.

The standoff comes as benchmark oil prices hit a four-year high Thursday while the average price at the pump jumped to $4.30 a gallon, up 27 cents in the last week. Democrats, eager to press their advantage, are exploiting public anger at rising costs while a top Republican super PAC warned Thursday that the Senate majority was at risk because of voters’ cost-of-living concerns.

Still, the White House officials insist that the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s global oil and natural gas supplies are shipped — is crippling Iran and will soon leave the regime little choice but to meet President Donald Trump’s demands.

“If you look at the economic stress that the Iranian people are under right now, it should be unacceptable to any civilized leader,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters Thursday.

The regime, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is “days” away from running out of storage capacity and before “fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in.” Trump, on Wednesday, told Axios that Iran’s storage facilities and pipelines “are getting close to exploding.”

Bessent wrote on X that Iran “is soon nearing storage capacity, which will force the regime to reduce oil production, resulting in an additional approximately $170 million per day in lost revenue, and causing permanent damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure.”

But energy experts such as Robin Mills, CEO of Qamar Energy and a former consultant for the European Union in Iraq, said Iran has far more storage capacity than administration officials are claiming and that the slow-burn blockade strategy only guarantees a prolonged energy disruption that will further crush the global economy.

“They’re not in a mood to surrender,” he said. “They know the clock is ticking not just for them, but for the U.S. and the rest of the world economy, too, and they think their clock is ticking slower.”

Meanwhile, the Iranians are mocking the administration’s focus on storage and production capacity. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has been a key part of the negotiating team, said there is no risk of “exploded” wells.

“3 days in, no well exploded,” he wrote on X. “We could extend to 30 and livestream the well here. That was the kind of junk advice the US admin gets from people like Bessent who also push the blockade theory and cranked oil up to $120+. Next stop:140. The issue isn’t the theory, it’s the mindset.”