Goodwill, if they have really some, is useless against U.S. aggression. The only thing they have going for them is control of the strait.
They will of course refrain from giving an impression of being trigger happy with it, but they will not care about Trump lies when deciding to close it again.
Closing the Strait was always something anyone with a brain and a map realized they could do. But it was also the “nuclear option” for Iran. They knew they could do it, but they also knew that doing it would bring a massive response from other countries, probably including direct military strikes. Which is why they never did it before.
But Trump, idiot that he is, hit them anyways, and so there was no actual additional cost to Iran to close the strait. They were getting bombed anyways, so they might as well do what they can to put pressure on the world to stop the attacks. And hey, looky looky, it worked.
But now they know how well it works, and that they can endure the bombing longer than the Western world can endure higher oil prices. So now they’re more likely to do it again in the future, if the mere threat of it doesn’t work as well as they’d like.
There’s a trope: Nice job breaking it, hero. Trump just played that role perfectly.
Agree 100%
I think this is the Kushner / Witkoff connection……those shysters have some master plan to transform the Middle East into a tech billionaire playground, with luxury resorts on the coasts and data centers in the deserts….this has been their primary interest from Day One.
It’s called a protection racket.
“Nice little US base/earner you have there. Be a shame it anything were to happen to it if you didn’t buy our fire insurance policy.”
Come on, now. The 60 day clock is ticking. It’s almost as if “my side” isn’t serious.
Here’s a prediction - US involvement in the war is over. Israel might continue, and Iran might block the Strait again, but Trump is done. He no longer has the stomach for it. He’ll say “we already won and got our peace deal, not my problem anymore”. He’ll blame others for economic and other ramifications.
Things are in flux right now. This morning began with the negotiations being called off because of Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Now there’s talk of (yet another) ceasefire.
We’re only a couple of days into the memo of understanding - I really don’t think we end up with any type of deal in 60 days.
This is just going to end up a quagmire.
“…were to busy reloading.”
Just a glance at the surface-level headlines on, e.g., the BBC reveals that
- Israel and Hezbollah have agreed a “cease-fire”
- Strikes have continued since the ceasefire
- Iran holds the “US responsible for any violations of [the] deal, including in Lebanon”
Totally stable, predictable situation
But Vance just said it won’t become a quagmire!
Of course, that’s how quagmires happen. No one knowingly goes into a quagmire. You look at it when it’s sunny and dry, and it looks like something you could cross very easily. But then you’re halfway across, and it starts to rain, and everything turns to mud, and now you’re stuck in the middle of it, and even just trying to turn around and get back to where you started is as much work as trying to continue on to where you were going in the first place…or go in any other direction, really.
He has incentive to say that though, it’s all his fault if it doesn’t work out:
I will give credit to Iran, they are one of the only groups on earth willing to treat Donald Trump for the mentally ill person he truly is.
The media and politicians demand we pretend Donald Trump is competent, mentally healthy and has America’s best interests at heart. Facing reality is extremely traumatic, so everyone comes together to demand we all believe this lie together because facing reality is far too scary and painful.
But that isn’t true. Donald Trump is severely mentally ill and extremely stupid.
He suffers from malignant narcissism (a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder) and he suffers from frontotemporal dementia. He is also a very stupid and clueless person.
People with NPD need to feel like everyone admires them and they need to feel like they are always in control. Iran was competent enough to weaponize trumps mental illness against him.
By closing the strait, they can collapse the global economy, which will harm trumps ego since it harms the economy under his watch, and harms his poll numbers, and is depressing his cult base of MAGA. Meanwhile all Iran has to do is tell Hezbollah to attack Israel. Once Israel fights back, Iran will close the strait again. They can cause trump a severe narcissistic injury anytime they want and since trump can’t control Iran, Hezbollah or Israel, Trump is desperate to regain control and will do whatever Iran wants to protect his ego and to feel like he is in control. Also I’m sure Iran has promised to funnel a few billion in bribes trumps way too, and that will make trump more prone to doing whatever Iran wants.
The entire world is held hostage to a severely mentally ill US president (and the 77 million idiots who voted for him), and a third world nation run by religious fanatics who know how to manipulate people with his mental illness. Fuck all of us.
Having said that, the global economy won’t sit back passively and let a theocracy control global energy supplies. When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, nations supported both sides so there would be a stalemate. When Hussein invaded Kuwait and tried to invade Saudi Arabia, the world got together to kick him out. One person controlling that much oil supply was not something the world was comfortable with.
I don’t see the world sitting on its hands while Iran threatens to close the strait of hormuz and the bab mandab strait using the houthis constantly. Iran is eventually going to piss off enough powerful nations that they actually do something about it. I guess it depends on how China responds. If Chinese ships have free passage, then maybe nothing happens. But if enough powerful nations see the economic shocks, then something may happen.
But I think the next step in the war is nations like Israel, the US, etc are going to send a lot of small arms, communication devices, etc into Iran to build up the infrastructure so the Iranians can go to civil war against the IRGC. I wouldn’t be surprised if arab nations are doing this too. They are probably sending in something like unconventional warfare experts to engage in sabotage and train anti-government militias.
As we have observed in the last couple of days, he has been following a paradoxical line of “we have reached a great understanding… now let me continue to be verbally abusive to everyone”. This because of course when everyone began crowing about how “it’s complete surrender!!” he just HAD to puff himself up to show being strong.
Excuse me, but I would have expected this to have been done from the start if the idea was, as often proclaimed by the Trumpsphere in the early days, that decapitating the regime would lead to the people rising. Which reinforces my view that they were not counting on thatl rather they learned the wrong lesson from Venezuela and expected that whoever took over governing would quickly roll over and sell out in exchange for staying in office with US blessings.
trump is a pathological liar, so no idea if this is true or not, but the US did supposedly arm the kurds to help them start an insurgency against Iran. The kurds supposedly kept the weapons instead.
The following month, Trump told Fox News that the United States had tried to send weapons to protesters inside Iran through Kurdish intermediaries.
“We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them,” Trump said. “And I think the Kurds took the guns.”
In May, he said he was “very disappointed in the Kurds,” adding that Washington had sent “some guns with ammunition, and they were supposed to be delivered, but they kept it.”
DW has spoken to sources on condition of anonymity from several Kurdish factions in Iraq, Turkey and Syria, who all categorically denied receiving any weapons from the US.
I can’t blame the kurds, the US keeps fucking them over, so they knew the US would fuck them over yet again and figured it was best to just keep the weapons rather than transfer them to Iran.
I agree. Trump bought into Netanyahu’s promises that “regime change” was feasible, because Venezuela made him think it would be easy.
Trump has no clue where to go from here. His only tool is to promise more violence, but I see 2 issues working against that: America has only a finite supply of munitions, and a land invasion isn’t realistic. That’s not to say that he can’t or won’t escalate the situation - perhaps by taking Kharg island- but it won’t go as he intends.
At this point, America really has no effective leverage, especially when you consider that just a few weeks ago we were getting warnings of low supply of oil. Trump has an urgency the Iranians can exploit.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/04/oil-price-spike-white-house-hormuz-00949435
There has been a low-level civil war between the Iranian regime and separatist groups including Kurdish and other groups basicallysince it’s inception. I would be shocked if the US wasn’t already arming them.
Any more widespread rebellion against the regime has been massively undermined by the US and Israel killing a bunch of Iranians supposedly on their behalf. Someone needs to take the arms and throwing more arms at the problem doesn’t help if you fracture the resistance.
Iran will eventually descend into civil war like Syria. Thats my view.
However in Iran, the official artesh military will not support the regime in a full civil war IMO. Its basically going to be the IRGC/basij vs everyone else.
Weapons are probably going to flood the region and in between the kurds, oppressed sunnis, democracy activists, arab minorities, etc. all with the goal of attacking the IRGC and government allied militias.
I feel like people don’t really see that this is also a proxy in the cold war with China, just like Venezuela was. The US and China are vying for control over the world, and they are looking for ways to undermine each other. The straits of hormuz and bab mandab are chokepoints where 1/4 of the world’s oil flows through and a large amount of other trade routes. The US wants to control China’s energy supply which is partly why they invaded Venezuela and are fighting in Iran.
Trump has been bitching about buying Greenland and Panama because people smarter than him are trying to get the US to obtain leverage over areas important for global trade routes (Greenland also has rare earth minerals).
I do not see the western world sitting back and letting a pro-China, anti-US Iran control these major waterways forever, especially if Iran realizes they can shut down 1/4 of global trade anytime they feel like it.
So its going to be the ideologically committed group that has decades of experience organizing and training non-state actors and is itself designed to be able to act as an autonomous paramilitary serving the ideological goals of the theocrats even if they lose their grip on legitimate power vs everyone else.
Seems like that would go grand.
Ok, valid criticism.