CBS News producer Seyed Rahim Bathaei in Tehran said Tuesday that, as far as he can see on the ground, the government remains fully in control and the country is not in a “state of collapse, by any standards at all.”Â
President Trump said in a brief social media post earlier Tuesday that Iran had “just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse,'” without offering any further context on who had conveyed the message or what it was referring to.
“There are serious consequences coming due to the war, as we see there are shortages and high inflation and lack of supply [of some basic goods], however, what some sources outside the country don’t take into consideration is that Iran is used to harsh conditions in all aspects of economic, social and political” life after decades of international sanctions and tension with the West, said Bathaei.
Nonetheless, he said it was clear inside Iran that if the U.S. naval blockade continues preventing Iran from exporting its oil and gas, it “cannot be ignored” by the country’s rulers.
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Mr. Trump and other senior administration officials portrayed the Iranian government as deeply fractured and without clear leadership, even claiming there has been “regime change” following the killing of many senior figures, including former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been named the new supreme leader, but he has not been seen or heard from directly since the war began, and he’s believed to have been seriously wounded in the same U.S. or Israeli strike that killed his father on the first day of the war.
But Bathaei said the “leadership matter is not what some people in the West think.”
“It is a manageable issue” for Tehran, he said, alluding to the multiple layers of authority built into the Islamic Republic system over 47 years.
