Groundhog Day in America. Still in Iran. We’ve won. Or we haven’t. We’ve obliterated. Or we haven’t. We’re negotiating. Or we’re not. We have a ceasefire. Or we don’t care if there’s a ceasefire or not. We’re going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. Or we’re not.
Who knows. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. There’s no great strategy. There’s no amazing plan. There’s nothing but the mental equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Iran has cards. Trump has bombs. Guess which one seems to be winning?
In his first term, Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal, a 159-page agreement signed by Obama, and five other world leaders. Tore it up even though international inspectors had verified Iranian compliance with its terms. Tore it up even though most of Trump’s advisers—as well as many Israeli military and intelligence officers—thought it was preferable to no deal at all.
Of course at the time Trump said he would negotiate a “better” deal but never even tried.
In the weeks leading up to this current war, Trump’s envoys negotiated with Iranian officials. In the end, Iranians put forth an offer which among other things would have restricted their enrichment of uranium to levels even lower than those allowed in the Obama deal.
Trump said talks would continue the following week.
Instead he and Netanyahu launched massive air strikes that Saturday, killing the entire top echelon of the regime’s leadership. Including some officials who had been identified as possibly more moderate successors to the Ayatollah.
This past Friday, after Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial—but not military—vessels.
Trump declared the strait was “completely open and ready for business” and that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” including “never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.”
But Iran’s chief negotiator posted on social media that Trump had made seven claims in an hour and that all seven of them were false.
Iranians said that if the US continued its blockade of Iranian ports, as Trump said it would, they would close the strait again.
On Saturday, they did, firing on a tanker and two other vessels, all of which left the encounters safely.
Trump has ordered a US Navy blockade on the Strait.
Or as one Senator posted: “We are spending billions to keep our entire navy in the Strait to fecklessly fail to open a waterway that wasn’t closed until Trump’s pointless war of choice closed it. He’s just burning your tax money.”
The current two-week ceasefire expires tomorrow. On Friday, Trump said: “Maybe I won’t extend it, but the blockade is going to remain. But maybe I won’t extend it, so you have a blockade, and unfortunately, we’ll have to start dropping bombs again.”
Meanwhile the WSJ reports that officials from the UAE have asked Treasury Secretary Bessent and Fed officials if the US will provide a financial backstop for the UAE if the Iran war continues to damage its economy. I.E. help cover the economic costs incurred because of US actions.
And Trump seems to be considering the idea.
No worries. Jared Kushner, leading American diplomacy in the Middle East, whose private equity firm oversees a $2B Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is on the job.
What could possibly go more wrong than it already has?
Rhetorical question.
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