Keeping the Strait Straight
News whiplash and the weird communications stylings of the Trump administration.
In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character awakens every morning to Sonny and Cher singing “I’ve Got You, Babe.” In Trump’s America, I am having (as I have mentioned before) a similar experience: as I am brushing my teeth each morning while listening to Morning Edition, I am told, literally almost daily, that the Strait of Hormuz is open or that the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
Yesterday, SecDef Hegseth announced the following:
“As a direct gift from the United States to the world, we have established a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait. American destroyers are on station, supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones and surveillance aircraft providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels, except Iran’s of course.”
So, roughly 24 hours ago, from when I am writing this, we were being told that the US was going to make sure the Strait was open to all but Iranian traffic. Reports yesterday morning suggested that not all carriers were convinced that the passage was safe.
But, of course, the recycling of Israel’s Iron Dome into Trump’s fantasy of a Golden Dome into Hegseth’s
“powerful red, white and blue dome” would surely inspire confidence, yes?
Well, before the US could demonstrate the might of its fully operational prismatic dome, Trump took to Truth Social yesterday evening with the following (and resulting in my morning news whiplash today).
And another communique this morning:
Really, this is Groundhog Day-esque. And it continues to amaze that all of this is being communicated to the world via social media (worse, as I often note, on a social media platform he owns and that earns advertising revenue via the clicks he generates–never forget that all of this is him directly profiting from his office right out in the open).
I will say again, I suspect most Americans have tuned a lot of this out. Most people have a vague sense of geography at best (I am likely being kind there) and even less sense of geostrategy and the linkage of all of this to the broader global economy (although they are acurely aware of gas prices). And, further, we appear to have so enured to Trump’s exaggerated and erratic rhetoric (Trump being Trump, dontcha know) that a lot of people just tune it all out.
Meanwhile, it is stunning (albeit not surprising) to watch how much all of this is clearly just a game for many high-level politicians. Lindsey Graham’s, for example, capacity to go on TV and say things like, “If we can take back control of the Strait of Hormuz, it is checkmate,” would be utterly laughable if this war had not cost billions of dollars and killed thousands of people. Because, as one might be aware, the Strait was open for transit before we started this “little excursion.”
Or, worse, our Secretary of State saying that the goal is now to get the Strait “back to the way it was.”
The nihilism of all of this is profound.
Nothing really matters, right? I mean, Lindsey is in the Senate and gets to be on TV, and Marco can continue to tell himself this will allow him to be president someday (and, gosh, he sure is important right now, isn’t he!).
Meanwhile, Axios reports: Exclusive: U.S. and Iran closing in on one-page memo to end war, officials say
Among other provisions, the deal would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
[…]
The duration of the moratorium on uranium enrichment is being actively negotiated, with three sources saying it would be at least 12 years and one putting 15 as a likely landing spot. Iran proposed a 5-year moratorium on enrichment and the U.S. demanded 20.
[…]
Two sources with knowledge also claimed Iran would agree to remove its highly enriched uranium from the country, a key U.S. priority that Tehran has rejected up to now.
We shall see. None of this strikes me as anywhere near worth the cost of this action, let alone the costs to the global economy that will continue for some time.
Again, the fact that the Strait is part of this negotiation is a visible failure on the part of the Trump administration. The fact that the negotiations are back to the nuclear program and sanctions relief puts us kind of where we were pre-attack, and I still do not see, especially from a cost/benefit POV, how any of this will be superior to where we were with the JCPOA.
Yup, declare victory and take your ball and go home.
Now that Iran knows it can close the strait it knows it has leverage it can easily apply. That makes having enriched uranium a lot less important. They were not going to build a bomb but wanted to have it for leverage. That failed but now they have a better, easier option. Of note, reports on the memorandum claim that they have agreed to negotiate details of the opening over the next 30 days. It’s not guaranteed to open. I also haven’t seen any mention of Iran having missiles in the reports. So at the very best, this is just another JCPOA with Trump making up some reasons why his version is bestest.
Steve
Lindsey, and if I had 4 feet, hooves and a tail you might be inclined to call me a horse.
Sigh, what a way to tell me you are dumb without telling me you are dumb.
Sanctions removal plus unfreezing funds looks like a great deal for Iran, if they trust Trump to follow through, not renege.
The GCC and Israel would be major displeased.
Seems to me a one page memo is not an agreement that everyone will agree what is on it or what it means.
Let’s see, the Strait of Hormuz was open before El Taco began Bibi’s war.
Then it was open again, briefly, before El Taco announced a blockade of Iran.
The big question now, is how El taco will manage to keep it closed.
This back and forth about the Strait and other things may not make sense if you’re a foreign policy traditionalist type, but if you’re just looking to make money on the markets it starts to make more sense….
I read Phillips O’Brien at Substack. Today he polled his readers on whether to continue his weekly updates on Iran, as nothing has really changed since April 1. I voted yes.
Today he digressed from Iran to talk about a sudden positive development on Ukraine.
And if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.
“The Strait is open.”
“The Strait is shut.”
“Open”
“Shut”
“Open!”
“Shut!”
What an utter farce.
How sure are we that this memo exists? I have seen it suggested elsewhere that since the failure rate for the three ships that got escorted was 33% ( 1 out of 3 ships got hit) no more ships were willing to run the strait under our leaky red, white and blue dome.
Steve
@JohnSF: A bit of Haiku:
The Strait is open.
The Strait is shut. Open. Shut.
Open! Shut! What farce.
@steve222: To be fair they should expect that 1 out of 3 domes is a blue one that will permanently cover their ship.
Easy peasy. Obviously since this is the greatest deal that the greatest mind of all the ages has put together, by definition it will be significantly better than the jcpoa.
Excuse me but don’t all y’all mean the Straight of Schrodinger’s cat?
To see how, you need to embrace the make-believe world in which Trump and the MAGA people live. In that world, Iran was within weeks of acquiring 11 nuclear weapons which they would immediately have used on Israel and America. Now President Trump, by unexplained methods, has ensured Iran can never build a nuke.
Should an agreement ever be concluded and Iran begin to resume its former role in the region as its prosperity returns, I would bet that within three years we’d hear shrill cries of “Nukes! Nukes! They’re building nukes again!” from Netanyahu.
@Scott:
That’s a feature, not a flaw. Trump’s first preference is a verbal agreement reached in private which he can then lie about to his heart’s content (example: claiming last October that Indian PM Modi had agreed in a phone call to stop buying oil from Russia). Next best option is a one page ‘memorandum of understanding’ which he can misrepresent because the language is so opaque (example: the supposed “trade deals” he or Bessent reached a year or more ago with several countries and the EU which have still not been finalised).
I don’t think Witkoff’s held a single meeting with representatives of another country in which an agreed communiqué has been released afterwards to memorialise the positions of the parties.
@Ken_L:
Would it take even that long? Trump and his dumb cult insisted last summer the pedo had “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. And that anyone saying otherwise was just a woke radical spreading fake news.
Less than a year later, the right assures us its inflationary Israel First war is necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran — the Persian regime having apparently rebuilt its recently-obliterated nuclear program in mere months or something or other.