PDB Afternoon Bulletin | September 17th, 2026: Iran’s Plan to Beat the U.S. Blockade Is Failing & Russia’s Satellite Help to Tehran

Mike Baker (0:12)

It's Thursday, the 17th of September. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. Well, all right, fine. It's a little bit more like the Early Evening Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, new reporting shows Iran's effort to bypass the US blockade in the Strait of Hormuz is running into serious trouble with thousands of trucks stranded and trade costs surging around the country. Later in the show, a CNN investigation finds Russian satellites may have helped Iran carry out one of its most damaging attacks on American military assets during the Iran War. Now, not to be churlish, but it should surprise no one at this point, that Russia and China have both assisted the Iranian regime with satellite imagery, intelligence and targeting assistance. But first, today's afternoon spotlight.

For months now, Iran has been looking for ways around the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The idea was pretty straightforward. If Tehran couldn't move enough goods through its ports because of the blockade, it would move more of them by land, more trucks through Pakistan and Turkey, more freight through Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, more cargo across the Caspian Sea, more trains running all the way to China. Well, we're now getting a decent look at how that plan is working for the regime. And according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, it's not going according to plan. Thousands of Iranian trucks are getting stuck at the country's borders. Customs facilities are overwhelmed. Perishable goods are spoiling and transportation costs are soaring, all of it adding to the economic pressure already being felt by ordinary Iranians.

Let's start with Turkey. The Journal reports that roughly 3,700 trucks have been stranded on the Iranian side of that border, with some drivers waiting as long as 20 days to cross. Things aren't much better along the border with Pakistan. At one of the main crossings, roughly 700 trucks can be waiting at any given time, many carrying cement or bottled gas or other goods, but according to a local civic group cited by the Journal, only about 40 trucks are being allowed through on a daily basis. Some Iranian drivers say they're spending days sitting in temperatures that can reach 122 degrees, sometimes without adequate access to food, water or sanitation. And because many of these trucks are carrying perishable goods, the delays are more than just inconvenient. Now to be clear, some of these border problems existed before the blockade. Iran's land crossings were already inefficient and bureaucratic. The problem is that Tehran is now asking that system to handle substantially more trade, well because its normal maritime routes have been blocked and it simply doesn't have the capacity. Iran is at some success finding alternatives. Traffic across the Caspian Sea, as an example, has reportedly increased sharply over the past five months, helping Iran bring in commodities like wheat and corn and cooking oil from Russia. A freight train connecting Tehran with Xi'an, China, is also running much more frequently.

But an Iranian trade official estimated that moving a single shipping container from China to Iran by land now costs around $12,000.

By sea, that same container would cost roughly $3,000.

Now, I'm not known as a math guy, but according to my mathen, that's four times the price just to move the same goods. One Iranian business leader has estimated that the blockade could eventually cost Iran around $18 billion a year in additional transportation and logistics expenses.

And somebody, of course, eventually asked to pay for that. Increasingly, that would be the Iranian consumer. In some cases, Iranian import experts say the added transportation costs and border delays can account for as much as a third of the final price of everyday goods once they eventually reach Tehran. That's happening while Iran is already dealing with extraordinary inflation. According to Iran's official statistics agency, food prices in August were roughly 128% higher than they were just a year earlier. And the pressure isn't limited to the roads. Iran's largest commercial container port has reportedly been sitting largely idle, while thousands of containers destined for Iran remain stranded in neighboring countries. Meanwhile, Mahan Air, an Iranian airline already under US sanctions, said Wednesday that it was suspending flights to Oman and Turkey, following another round of American sanctions targeting companies accused of supporting the carrier.

So, Iran is now being squeezed from several directions at once. Its ports are constrained. Its overland routes are clogged and expensive. Some air connections are narrowing. And neighboring countries can close or restrict border crossings with very little warning, as Iraq demonstrated over the weekend when it temporarily shut cargo terminals along the Iranian border. And that's the larger problem for the Iranian regime. Iran's strategy doesn't require it to completely replace maritime trade with trucks and trains.