WSJ: Say, Trump May Actually Win the Hormuz Crisis

Strategic patience for the win? Iran's regime leaders thought they could force the US to buckle by strangling the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz. The US, however, has an actual blue-water navy, and that tends to matter in blockades involving a country entirely reliant on sea trade for its only valuable export economy.

As the Wall Street Journal concedes, Donald Trump's Hormuz blockade is a lot less "leaky" than the IRGC's. And as Trump himself pointed out yesterday, the Strait may not matter for very much longer anyway:

Talk about a bad bet. The IRGC may have convinced itself that Trump would buckle out of domestic political pressures, not to mention diplomatic pushes from Gulf states concerned about attacks on their own energy infrastructure. And for a few months, anyway, that position looked accurate. Qatar, Pakistan, and Turkey – and at times, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – pushed Trump into fruitless negotiations with the IRGC, which not only went nowhere but changed nothing even when agreements did get reached.

In July, Trump stopped talking about deals. Instead, he started talking about increasing the blockade, and eventually expanded the economic warfare into Scott Bessent's "economic D-Day." Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan are still trying to get the band back together in Islamabad, but Trump has made clear this week that he has no interest.

That's true – for now. However, the al-Sharaa government in Syria stepped up this week to declare itself open for business in oil distribution. With Syria starting to stabilize in its post-Assad era, al-Sharaa wants to bring investors into his country to turn it into a pipeline for the western Gulf nations to the Mediterranean. Naturally, Donald Trump has enthusiastically endorsed the idea:

Even if the project gets expedited, the construction of a pipeline system will take several years. There are plans to rehabilitate a 1950s-era pipeline and restore it to service, but that won't happen overnight. However, launching these projects will make clear that Iran's influence on global economics will be ending sooner or later, with or without a resolution in Hormuz, and most pointedly, whether Iranian crude comes on the market or not.

The IRGC is running out of options, now and in the future. The US Navy has increased the "leakage" from Iran's attempted blockage to nearly the normal level of shipping through the Strait, at least for crude. Iran tried to cut a deal with Oman that would eliminate those routes set up by the US Navy, but Trump threatened to make them the next US target if they interfered or attempted to "toll" commercial traffic. Oman caved a couple of days ago:

The IRGC won't surrender any time soon, if at all. However, the clock is ticking on their regime, and they know it. As long as Trump maintains his strategic patience, the regime will slowly get strangled to the point where a popular revolt might succeed, especially if the regime's thugs stop getting compensated. Trump can do this for two more years, by which time the pipeline options might render moot what's left of Iran's leverage. The US only needs the political will to maintain strategic patience with the blockade, and the strength to enforce sanctions on the IRGC's enablers.

Addendum: Strategic patience does not preclude enforcement of the blockade nor responses to attacks. As Trump warned this week, the US is now applying consequences for Iranian attacks on American targets to its merchant tanker fleet:

Iran lacks the capacity to replace these tankers, and lacks the resources to buy them. Those attacks on American targets are carrying a high long-term cost for the IRGC without any corresponding benefit.

Trust Trump’s Plan, it is all working so well that diesel has reached an all time high price of about 6 bucks a gallon. Freight and flight rates will skyrocket. The “little excursion’ has become a nagging fixture of our lives, 4 to 6 weeks is long past, 4 to 6 months are gone too and no clear end of this is in sight for many more months at best. My bet today is that if this does not end soon Trump will call things as they are the new normal and pretend this is over moving on to the next shiny object. Squirrel!

Part of this fuel price is huge refining margins that went even higher after Trump admonished suppliers to lower prices with the formerly dropping price of oil that is now going back up smartly.

Oil prices have been on such a roller coaster of uncertainty that nobody with any sense wants to be caught with high inventories of high cost oil or product leading to current stocks being at their lowest point in at least the last five years and probably an even longer time than that.

Bottom line, Trump’s Folly to rid the world of the terror of “uranium dust” that he himself says only the US or the Chicoms can dig up has turned petrocarbon supplies and prices upside down for six months now.

Trump started this and then got cold feet when he paused long enough to consider the ramifications of his knee-jerk actions based on Iranian and Israeli claims then he caved to our ME “allies”. I think he also had a hard reckoning when the two F-15 crew went down and it was then that he began to lose his nerve. Real people get killed, yup.

Negotiations went nowhere of course and to what end if they had? Would there have been the slightest real expectation that Iran would not cheat and revive their nuclear programs? That hope is a fool’s errand. Trump may not have said so outright but he knows the cycle of them starting and then being destroyed over and over is likely. In the 60 Minutes interview of June he rightly said that we could watch them and if they did go at their nuclear program again we would just destroy it again.

He had already accomplished his goal of disabling Iran’s nuclear ambitions last summer with Midnight Hammer, he said so himself also in the 60 Minutes interview in June from about the 12 minute mark. The result of the last 6 months of, until today, increasingly lukewarm action is that the Iranians are no closer or further away from having nuclear weapons than they were on February 28 of this year before the current mess began. Maybe today marks the beginning of a realization that he has to pound the living hell out of Iran? I would like that because then this might actually wind down. In taking Iran out of the oil business his “good” friend Ping might get really animated though. For now, his loss of supplies is being tolerated and accommodated. Being their largest trading partner still has leverage I suppose.

Hormuz has to be made meaningless, that will take many months if not a couple of years for alternate routes to be built, it should have been done long ago. Regime change in Iran is unlikely. In the meantime Trump needs to quit screwing around and finish what he started quickly and even at that, the costly uncertainty for world oil prices and other things may just remain until Hormuz is made meaningless.

If it even matters at all I am pretty certain that he has lost the mid-terms because if other former adherents of his feel anywhere close to the way I feel they will stay home or find a way to vote for the opposition. His blowing off the situation by calling it small potatoes put the icing on the cake for me. I think he has lost what is left of his damn mind. It was the most insensitive and stupid thing he has said in a long line of insensitive and stupid things he has said in the last year and a half.

Not never Trump just not anymore, I’m fed up with the braggart, mouthy, pompous ass.

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