Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump's "plan" to charge oil carriers a 20% fee to be escorted through the Strait of Hormuz is no more. Less than 24 hours after announcing the highly implausible initiative, the President got on his divorced-from-reality social media platform to share this announcement:
Oil is flowing like never before, thanks to the awesome Power of the United States Military. A special salute to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, and Commander of the United States Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper. Because of them, and all members of the Most Powerful Military anywhere in the World, BY FAR, the Strait of Hormuz is open to ALL Ship traffic except for Iran — and that is because of their lying, violent, malicious leadership, which is taking them down the path of TOTAL DESTRUCTION. We will therefore have a FULL Blockade, but only on Ships coming to and from Iranian ports, or carrying anything have to do with Iranian cargo. Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States. Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future. As everyone is aware, we have the largest Dollar Investment into the United States, of any Country in History, but these new Investments will make that Number even larger, and we will see Factories, Plants, and Equipment pour into the United States at Historic levels, which will create additional millions of High Paying AMERICAN Jobs! America is WINNING again, winning like never before. The days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protestors, are OVER and, most importantly, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
You would think that, after more than a decade of writing about this man, we would be completely inured to his propensity for peddling blatant falsehoods. And yet, sometimes he still manages to surprise us. It would seem that the new plan is that only the Gulf States are going to pay. But the payment will be in the form of massive investments! In the United States! And yet, the Gulf States will also benefit! And there will be prosperity! And jobs! And winning! And Iran will never have a nuclear weapon! The only thing Trump forgot to add is that everyone involved also gets their very own pony.
On a similar note, we know full well that Trump is a terrible businessman and a lousy negotiator, making The Art of the Deal the most ironic work of literature in the Western canon. But again, he still manages to surprise us on occasion with how utterly inept he is. (Z) has given lectures on negotiating, and one of the very first precepts is that you have to get inside the other side's head, and try to understand what they are thinking. The mess in the Strait of Hormuz is entirely Trump's fault. Did he REALLY think that the other industrial powers, who are in a position to tell him to pound sand, were going to reward the United States for that by paying a 20% "protection" fee for their oil shipments? It's really no different from a mafia racket: "That's some nice oil ya got there. Shame if anything happened to it." The difference is that the power differential between the mafia and Ma and Pa Shopkeeper is enormous, while the power differential between the U.S. and, say, Japan or Australia or China is not.
At this point, when it comes to the Iran War, is there anything that comes out of Trump's mouth that you can believe? OK, we suppose that when he says there will be bombing, you can believe that. And indeed, he said that yesterday, and the bombing is definitely underway.
Trump also spent much oxygen yesterday making clear that his "strategy" is the same as it's always been: The U.S. is going to bomb the Iranians back to the Stone Age, and he won't be negotiating with them until they come crawling on their knees to beg for mercy. But do you really believe that last part? Do you really believe he's not going to TACO once the Iranians have held out for a week or so? At that point, he'll send J.D. Vance or some other sycophant to try to work out another ceasefire that doesn't actually lead to a cessation of fire. And can you believe any new idea, initiative, policy or other "change" Trump announces, since he always changes course (usually in a day or two, once he learns that even the Fox people think his plans are stupid)? Can you believe anything he says about peace, negotiations, ceasefires, concessions being given to Iran, concessions being demanded from Iran, or anything else? The post above is the utterly delusional product of an utterly deluded mind. We don't know if the delusions are limited to just Iran, or if Trump is generally delusional these days (for what it's worth, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-GA, said yesterday that even many of his Republican colleagues believe Trump has "lost it"). Whatever is going on, Trump and his stupid social media account are the only source for information on the prosecution of the Iran War, and he is an utterly unreliable and untrustworthy source. We really are living through a postmodern presidency, one in which nothing has any meaning.
What we do know is that this war is extracting a heavy price on America, despite Trump's pretensions to the contrary. To start, the death toll is now up to 14, as the Navy pilot who crashed his helicopter into the Arabian Sea suffered serious brain injuries, and now has succumbed to those injuries. Truth be told, we're a bit surprised the total is only 14. If one Iranian drone sneaks through the U.S. defenses, and scores just the right hit, the death total could easily multiply by double or triple or tenfold. It is fortunate that the people who man U.S. Navy ships, and are responsible for making sure that doesn't happen, are more capable at their jobs than Trump is at his.
The financial costs of the war are also going to be quite substantial. CNN took a look, and ballparked the cost of the war at $40 billion. However, that number comes with some huge caveats. First, CNN crunched the numbers at a time when the war was supposedly "over." And so, that counter is still counting up, day by day, hour by hour. Second, the $40 billion only covers the direct costs of the war, in terms of bases that were damaged, munitions that were expended, etc. It does not cover operational costs, since those were somewhat baked into the annual Defense Department budget—after all, whether a soldier is in the Middle East or is at Fort Dix, they still have to be paid. This said, it does cost more to transport a soldier to the Middle East and to feed and shelter them there, than it would cost if they just stayed in New Jersey (home to Fort Dix). Based on the DoD's ask for next year, it looks like the additional operational costs imposed by the war are already at $80 billion and counting. Also, there are many future costs, including ongoing medical care for those who are injured, and interest on the money that will be borrowed to pay for all of this.
There will also be a cost imposed on Americans. When the war was hot, gas prices shot up, and inflation came along for the ride. When the war started to cool, gas prices dropped, and June actually saw a slight drop in inflation, from 4.2% to 3.5%. Of course, the extra money spent in March/April/May is still gone, but lower prices (well, technically, smaller increases in prices) would be great news for people who are having trouble making ends meet. But now that the war is hot again, oil prices are going right back up. A barrel of Brent crude was trading for between $76 and $80 all last week. It jumped to $85/barrel on Monday, and has yo-yo'ed between $84/barrel and $87/barrel since.
Naturally, the war is going to deprive the United States of some of its soft power, as governments and peoples around the world downgrade their opinions of the United States as a moral actor and a reliable partner. Each year, the think tank Nira Data talks to 50,000 or so people around the world, and asks them if they have a positive or negative view of 50 or so prominent nations. A couple of weeks ago, Nira released the results of its latest survey, conducted mostly after the U.S. started bombing Iran (and entirely after the U.S. invaded Venezuela).
Here's a quick pop quiz. How many of these 12 nations did the United States do better than?
Having trouble deciding? We listed them in alphabetical order, but how about we give them to you in order of net approval?
For context, the most highly regarded nations in the world are Switzerland and Canada, at +36. That said, it's clearly possible to be a less-than-perfect global citizen, and pull a moderately OK score (see China, Qatar, etc.). Anyhow, the U.S. is currently at -16, which means it doesn't beat ANY of these nations. In fact, the only four nations that did worse than the U.S. are Iran (-17), Afghanistan (-19), North Korea (-19) and Israel (-24). Ostensibly, the survey is focused particularly on how well various nations are living up to democratic ideals. That means that, if you believe the numbers, communist China is technically doing better on democracy than the U.S. is. Now, there's clearly some amount of projection going on here, with factors other than "commitment to democracy" factoring into some respondents' opinions. But whatever the basis for evaluation really is in the minds of those who were surveyed, one cannot deny that the reputation of the U.S. (and that of Israel) is dropping like a stone, which again, means a loss of soft power. That's not completely the doing of the current conflicts in the Middle East, but those conflicts are a big part of it.
Each day that passes, the Iran War bears more and more resemblance to Vietnam. True, there is no draft right now, and there are no American "boots on the ground," and those are good things. Still, in both cases you had a president who could not win, and yet could not afford to cut his losses and exit the conflict. And both Lyndon B. Johnson and Donald Trump had/have many words about how negotiations were ongoing, or would be ongoing, or were going well, and also many big words about how the war was almost over and American victory would be complete. It was a lie (or a delusion) for Johnson and, by all appearances, it's a lie AND a delusion for Trump.
And you know how these endless wars tend to end these days? The president who is all-in just can't do it, politically, and so it's up to the next guy (or one of the guys AFTER the next guy), who has not spent all his political capital and who has not made promises of victory. Harry S. Truman started the Korean War; Dwight D. Eisenhower ended it. LBJ started (well, escalated) Vietnam, Richard Nixon ended it. George W. Bush started the Iraq War; Barack Obama ended it. Bush started the Afghanistan War, Joe Biden ended it. At this point, would you be surprised if the Iran War is still underway when Trump leaves office, and it's up to the next president to clean up the mess? We certainly wouldn't. If so, it would be a real shame, because the U.S. just can't afford this war, on so many levels. (Z)
P.S.: We are aware that the nation of Turkey has updated the preferred spelling of its name. However, we generally follow AP style, and the AP is sticking with "Turkey." The reason is that the updated spelling uses special, non-English characters, and some outlets are not equipped to handle that. So, the AP's general approach, which they are applying here, is to accommodate preferences for different English-language renderings, but not to accommodate preferences that involve the use of foreign characters. In other words, if the Turks wanted to be Turkiye, AP would bow to that. But AP does not accommodate Türkiye. We are not alone in this decision. The New York Times, CNN, and many other media outlets also use "Turkey."