The Damage to the Iranian Port at Bandar Abbas

Beni Sabti, an expert Iran researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), has some important observations about the recent explosion at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas: “Explosion at Iranian port severely impacts regime, Iran expert says,” by Maya Cohen, Jerusalem Post, April 27, 2025:

The mass explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, which took place on Saturday, has significantly impacted the Iranian regime, according to Beni Sabti, an expert in the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

“The port that blew up in the southern Iranian city was the most important port for the Iranian regime,” Sabti told Maariv on Sunday.

It is from this port at Bandar Abbas — the largest in Iran — that Iran ships weapons to its proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis. With the port so extensively damaged, fewer ships can take on cargo. So those shiploads of weapons meant to resupply Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, at a time when both terror groups are under tremendous military pressure, Hezbollah from the IDF, and the Houthis from the Americans, will either be greatly reduced or curtailed altogether.

He said the reason for the port’s importance was “not only because it was the largest port in Iran, but because the hub was used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to transfer weapons to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and the Houthis.”

It was also used “to illegally transfer oil to China,” Sabti added.

“Various tankers operated there, disappearing and reappearing, essentially collecting oil from the port or bringing in goods that Iran needs,” he said. “This location and this port were extremely critical to the survival of the Iranian regime.”

Sabti was hesitant about determining what the cause of the explosion was….

There are three possibilities. One possibility is that there was careless handling of the recent shipment from China of chemicals used to make fuel for ballistic missiles. This is the explanation that the Iranian authorities are pushing.

A second possibility is sabotage by Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, the armed group inside Iran that hopes to overthrow the hated regime of the mullahs, and has carried out attacks in the past, though nothing as dramatic or devastating as this attack.

A third possibility is sabotage by Mossad. Israel has ever since 2010, with the Stuxnet computer worm, been trying to slow down Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon. The Stuxnet malware caused many of Iran’s centrifuges that were used to enrich uranium to malfunction, and speed up so much that they destroyed themselves.

Who, or what, caused the explosion, remains unclear.

Sabti addressed the claims that the explosion was attributed to Israel, saying, “It’s common and widespread for some Iranian regime-affiliated figures to blame Israel. Officially, however, the regime is refraining from doing so – possibly because it’s not in their interest at this time.”

The reason the Iranian regime would not want to blame Israel for the explosion is simple: if it were to do so, it would then be expected by the Iranian people to retaliate. But Iran’s leaders know that if they were to launch any attack on the Jewish state, no matter how limited, Israel would in turn retaliate, with devastating force, and with Iran helpless to defend itself because the IDF on October 26, 2024 destroyed all of Iran’s air defenses, including its four S-300 batteries. Far better, then, to blame negligence by Iranians working at the port in their handling of the chemicals recently delivered by China. This will cause criticism of the “incompetence” of some of the port’s personnel, but not result in a wholesale condemnation of the regime.

In Lebanon on August 4, 2020, a huge explosion at the Port of Beirut caused 218 deaths, 7,000 wounded, 300,000 people displaced, and $15 billion in property damage. It was the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. The “Blast in Beirut” was caused by the negligent storing of ammonium nitrates by Hezbollah. It makes sense that with that disaster in mind, the Iranians would quickly conclude that this blast, too, was the result of negligent handling of chemicals. In this case not ammonium nitrates, but fuel for ballistic missiles that had recently been delivered to Iran by China, and had been carelessly stored, were according to the authorities to blame.

Think of what will happen to Iran’s economy if for weeks, or months, the country’s largest port remains mostly out of commission. How will oil and LNG be exported to China, Russia, and India? How will Iran’s other main exports — chemicals, plastics, fruits, ceramic products and metals — be sent abroad, if the port remains closed?

Tens of billions of dollars in exports could remain inside Iran until such time as the damage to the port is repaired. And that could take a very long time. Iran’s economy was already in free fall, before the explosion, with one-third of the country now living below the poverty line. The exchange rate in 1979, when Khomeini came to power, was 70 rials to the dollar. Today it is more than 800,000 rials to the dollar. The economic consequences of this explosion may finally cause the total collapse of Iran’s economy, and with it, the regime. No wonder the Supreme Leader and his henchmen are now desperate, in Iran’s negotiations with Steve Witkoff in Oman, to have American sanctions lifted. Now is the best time — thanks to that explosion at Bandar Abbas — to pressure the Iranians to surrender their store of enriched uranium, and to destroy all of their centrifuges so that they cannot enrich any more.