“They’re failing,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday. “They’re currency is worthless, their inflation is probably 150 percent, the real number is 150 percent, they aren’t paying their soldiers, they can’t pay their soldiers, their money is worthless.”
In fact, Trump has been claiming Iran’s economy is in shambles for weeks. “I think Iran is in very bad shape. I think they’re pretty desperate,” he said last month, a week after the blockade was first installed.
The White House has touted the combination of the U.S. military blockade on Iranian ports and the so-called Operation Economic Fury, a series of sanctions on Iran, as rendering serious damage to the country’s economic situation.