The Mideast is a mess. After more than a month of crushing bombardment, battered Iran agreed to a cease fire and historic peace talks with the U.S. Unfortunately, after a 21-hour marathon session in Islamabad Pakistan those negotiations collapsed over the weekend. In a quirky act born of frustration and defiance, President Trump then ordered our fleet to blockade the Hormuz Strait. Sort of, ‘you can’t blockade us because we blockaded you first.’
If that confuses you, join the club.
President Trump is apparently keen on punishing any nation which thought to avoid the Hormuz Strait bottleneck by paying an illegal ransom to what is left of the Iranian government. The payment is illegal because the Strait is considered an international waterway. Freedom of navigation is guaranteed by the Law of the Sea and various treaties, so payment to Iran is an illegal bribe. Iran is demanding a boatload of money in untraceable bitcoin, averaging about $2 million per ship. Since one supertanker’s oil cargo is worth between $140 and $200 million, paying the hefty ransom makes economic sense.
President Trump will not hear of it. Instead, on Sunday, he decided that we would blockade the Strait. With limited exceptions still being worked out at press time, no vessel is permitted in or out of the Strait unless it has the permission of the U.S. Navy. Yes, we are blocking the Strait we were so concerned the Iranians wanted to block. The irony is unavoidable. How our blockade will work when the ship we stop is sailing under the flag of say China remains to be seen. Still, if Trump succeeds in choking off the flow of oil Iran’s sole revenue source, however pissed off they might be in Beijing, the sooner Tehran might capitulate and end the conflict.
The chance of that happy ending remains remote. If you think things are bad now, just wait. Having reported from the Mideast since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, my rule is that the news always gets worse. The region is the most volatile on the planet. The land is claimed by multiple religions, numerous ethnicities and countless factions. Most of them hate each other, but they hate Israel worst of all.
Many Israelis and Jewish people generally believe that after the vicious surprise attack of October 7, 2023, there is no choice but to wage a war of survival against the forces arrayed against the Jewish State. Prime Minister BiBi Netanyahu managed to convince President Trump that Israel’s interest and Americas interest in eliminating the mortal threat Iran posed were aligned.
Trump then ordered the U.S. fighting forces to war against Iran. So far, the war still rages, quieted momentarily by a shaky ceasefire, and the bizarre possibility that we may voluntarily make our nightmare blockade a reality.
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