Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 2, 2026 05:42
VIEWED: 15626
PAGE 67 of 73
Quote:Signym, you made this about 6ix. You are old enough and have wide enough experience to generalize to the tens of millions in the USA behaving/feeling/voting the way 6ix does, going all the way back to the beginning of politics in the Roman Empire or, maybe, caveman society. Guys like him have held back civilization's progress and promoted war because they are fearful of everything, all the time, everywhere.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Get fucked.
You white women and your suicidal empathy isn't what's going to take America down.
We won't allow allow it.
All Muslims need to die.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
IT'S NOT EMPATHY.
Here's what's going on with you SIX.
JUST LIKE TED BUNDY JR HERE, YOU'RE SCARED.
You can't engage MEANINGFULLY in the topic bc it scares you.
Instead, you get angry and aggressive because ...
Being angry and aggressive makes you feel STRONG, IN CONTROL, POWERFUL instead of HELPLESS, WEAK, AND FEARFUL.
Personally, I think your overblown fear to certain issues (Muslims, Covid, AIDS) is just displacement.
Look at how your anger bleeds over from Muslims to blacks to illegal aliens to "them"!
Your blind anger about SOME things is a relief valve for all the OTHER things that make you feel insecure. And god knows, there are plenty of them, including the overall job situation of white males without a college degree. (IRAN ISN'T ONE OF THEM.)
And because you LIKE the feeling of being POWERFUL AND RIGHTEOUS AND ANGRY, you refuse to give it up. You believe these "issues" don't immediately threaten your health or finances, so they're safe to be stupid about.
Just contrast how you reacted to pneumonia, diabetes, and your floodplain issues. THOSE were scary, but you gathered as much info as you could to genuinely control your situation as best you could, even tho some of it left you with a little PTSD.
I guess I can't expect you to be rational all the time. You've got enough to deal with.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Iran War Is Lost. Now Fix What It Broke.
America has to rethink how it moves resources, fights wars, and deters adversaries.
By Andrew Exum | July 23, 2026, 4:51 PM ET
From 2015 to 2017, Andrew Exum was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/07/iran-defeat-cost-oil
-drones/688034/
The sooner we acknowledge that the United States has lost the war with Iran and stop fighting, the better. Because we now have a lot of work to do.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was pressed to explain before the Senate what the United States had accomplished in its war with Iran. Sputtering with fury at times, he claimed that Washington had won “a historic military victory.” But even if that were so, as a certain dead Prussian once counseled, nations do not fight wars to achieve military objectives. They fight wars to achieve political objectives.
The United States has not secured any of its political objectives in the war with Iran, and indeed, it has produced a situation in July that is markedly worse than the one antebellum: Iran’s former supreme leader, an elderly man known for his extreme views but also his caution, has been replaced by a group of leaders who are, if anything, more extreme and far less cautious about confronting the United States and its partners in the region.
The Strait of Hormuz, which was open prior to the start of the conflict, is now largely closed. And the Arabian Peninsula’s other choke point, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, appears to have been shut by Iran’s partners in Yemen, the Houthis. In the spring, American energy executives sounded like Chicken Little as they warned of oil and gas shortages that a reduction in Chinese oil imports helped forestall. But Exxon and Chevron have more recently cautioned that an energy crunch really is inevitable if the situation does not improve, and that this could threaten the entire global economy.
The U.S. does not have a workable military solution to this problem. Iran can threaten tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz with little more than inexpensive drones. And, thanks to this conflict, Tehran has discovered that it has powerful psychological leverage over shipping companies and their insurers—so much so that it hardly needs to lay mines to block the strait.
For the U.S. to finance this war beyond the $37.5 billion that the Pentagon admits it has already spent—the actual number is surely much higher—would be to throw good money after bad. The Trump administration needs to face up to having lost so that it can focus on preventing the effects of an embarrassing but ultimately manageable defeat from spreading beyond the Persian Gulf. This will involve rethinking some fundamentals—such as how the region’s oil reaches world markets, how the United States wages war, and how Iran can be deterred from making trouble for American interests in the future.
The Strait of Hormuz is now, and likely indefinitely will be, under a degree of Iranian control that did not exist prior to the conflict. Washington and its allies, together with private-sector investors, will need to devote considerable time and money toward securing alternate routes for Middle Eastern oil to reach global markets. Some infrastructure already exists. The East-West Pipeline that runs across Saudi Arabia was built during the Iran-Iraq War, which was the last time oil tankers struggled to navigate the strait. This pipeline moves roughly 7 million barrels of oil a day. The Saudis are considering doubling that capacity. The United Arab Emirates has a similar pipeline that bypasses the strait, and whose volume will also likely need to double. Oil and gas pipelines, like other oil infrastructure in the Gulf, are vulnerable to Iranian drone strikes, but they are relatively easy to repair.
The United States should encourage the Saudis and Emiratis to run branches of their pipelines through Yemen and Oman, to keep those countries invested in maintaining the free flow of oil and gas out of the peninsula.
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‘This country is in deep trouble’: Leon Panetta sounds alarm on Iran war
By Jennifer Bowers Bahney | Jul 23
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/this-country-is-in-deep-trouble-l
eon-panetta-sounds-alarm-on-iran-war/ar-AA28xShM
Key takeaways
• Deep Trouble: Former CIA Director Leon Panetta warns the U.S. is in a difficult position, comparing the Iran conflict to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, with no clear objectives and rising domestic costs.
• Straits of Hormuz: Panetta emphasizes that control over the Straits of Hormuz is crucial for leverage and restoring economic stability, criticizing past agreements that gave Iran influence there.
• Negotiation Complexity: Any attempt to return to talks with Iran will be highly complicated, involving both nuclear issues and control of strategic waterways, according to Panetta.
The U.S. is in “deep trouble” when it comes to the Iran war, said a former top CIA official who compared the months long conflict to America’s involvement in Vietnam.
Leon Panetta, who led the Central Intelligence Agency during President Barack Obama’s administration, made the remark during a Thursday appearance on CNN in which he was asked who had the “upper hand” in Iran.
“Well, history tells us that forever wars do not end well,” Panetta said.
“And I think that’s the box we’re in right now,” he added. “Whether it was Vietnam, whether it was Iraq, whether it’s Afghanistan, or whether it’s Iran right now, the problem is that there really is no clear objective that the president is trying to put his arms around.”
“So he continues military attacks, which intelligence makes clear is not going to move Iran. And at the same time, the American people are paying a very heavy price as a result of oil prices going sky high and the cost of living increasing as much as it is,” Panetta noted.
“And so he he’s basically in a box right now trying to figure out if there’s a way out. And frankly, I think right now, this country is in deep trouble in terms of figuring some kind of strategy that can end this war. It does not look well at this point.”
Anchor Brianna Keilar asked Panetta how the U.S. gets back to the negotiating table with Iran.
“There’s only one way I’ve thought of to achieve any kind of leverage in dealing with Iran, and that relates to the Straits of Hormuz,” Panetta said, continuing:
Quote:
It was a mistake in the MOU to imply — and it did strongly imply — that Iran would control the Straits of Hormuz. That was a bad mistake, and the result is they continue to use that as leverage to get back at the United States.
What the United States has to do in order to get any kind of leverage here is, it has to take control of the Straits of Hormuz and be able to control the free access that is necessary in order to be able to restore our economy.
If the president doesn’t take any action to be able to take control of the Straits of Hormuz, then I think we’re only left with the hope that somehow we’re going to get back to a negotiating table that is now not only going to consider what happens in the nuclear area, but is going to consider what happens to the Straits of Hormuz as well.
That’s going to be a very complicated negotiation.
At an event at the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday, Trump said the U.S. was “doing very well against the Islamic Republic of Iran” — despite a vote in the House to end the war.
“They would like to do something, but I say, they’re not ready yet. They need more of the same. They’re not ready yet. They have some evil intentions. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon,” the president added.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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U.S. Army Is Buying Older PAC-2 Patriot Missiles For The First Time In Decades
PAC-2 GEM-T missiles are not generally as capable as their PAC-3 counterparts, but the Army needs all the Patriots it can get.
By Joseph Trevithick
Published Jul 23, 2026 2:17 PM EDT
https://www.twz.com/land/u-s-army-is-buying-older-pac-2-patriot-missil
es-for-the-first-time-in-decades
. . . strain on existing Patriot interceptor supply chains, as well as for complete Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, has created problems for current and future customers. Switzerland notably saw its orders for new Patriot batteries deferred last year due to demand from Ukraine. In April, Swiss authorities raised the prospect of canceling the deal altogether due to the delays. Concerns have been raised about the ability of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to meet even Ukraine’s needs. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin also reportedly warned Germany, Japan, Poland, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia about potential uncertainty surrounding PAC-3 deliveries.
The U.S. Army’s first PAC-2 GEM-T order in decades makes clear that domestic need for Patriot interceptors is now pushing American authorities to other sources of supply, and toward maxing out production of PAC-2 and PAC-3 types. Though perhaps less capable than the latest PAC-3 MSE variant, GEM-Ts are clearly still operationally relevant, and represent an additional avenue to bolster stockpiles. Not every target necessarily requires the employment of the highest-end interceptor, either. This is something Lockheed Martin has been stressing around its announcement of the new ACE variant of the PAC-3, which is explicitly stated to be less capable than the MSE version.
With this in mind, the first U.S. GEM-T order in decades is a significant development, but one that also speaks to the immense strains on stockpiles and supply chains, which could take years to fully address.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Signym, you made this about 6ix. You are old enough and have wide enough experience to generalize to the tens of millions in the USA behaving/feeling/voting the way 6ix does, going all the way back to the beginning of politics in the Roman Empire or, maybe, caveman society. Guys like him have held back civilization's progress and promoted war because they are fearful of everything, all the time, everywhere.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Get fucked.
You white women and your suicidal empathy isn't what's going to take America down.
We won't allow allow it.
All Muslims need to die.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
IT'S NOT EMPATHY.
Here's what's going on with you SIX.
JUST LIKE TED BUNDY JR HERE, YOU'RE SCARED.
You can't engage MEANINGFULLY in the topic bc it scares you.
Instead, you get angry and aggressive because ...
Being angry and aggressive makes you feel STRONG, IN CONTROL, POWERFUL instead of HELPLESS, WEAK, AND FEARFUL.
Personally, I think your overblown fear to certain issues (Muslims, Covid, AIDS) is just displacement.
Look at how your anger bleeds over from Muslims to blacks to illegal aliens to "them"!
Your blind anger about SOME things is a relief valve for all the OTHER things that make you feel insecure. And god knows, there are plenty of them, including the overall job situation of white males without a college degree. (IRAN ISN'T ONE OF THEM.)
And because you LIKE the feeling of being POWERFUL AND RIGHTEOUS AND ANGRY, you refuse to give it up. You believe these "issues" don't immediately threaten your health or finances, so they're safe to be stupid about.
Just contrast how you reacted to pneumonia, diabetes, and your floodplain issues. THOSE were scary, but you gathered as much info as you could to genuinely control your situation as best you could, even tho some of it left you with a little PTSD.
I guess I can't expect you to be rational all the time. You've got enough to deal with.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Everything you just said is bullshit. Just like everything you have ever said in your life, Shit Golem.
Nobody in this country wants anything to do with your version of "Progress". You've all but destroyed this country. And we're not going to allow you to do it anymore.
Get the fuck out of my country if you don't like it. Go to Iran and see how long it takes for them to throw your annoying ass off a fucking building.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
SIX:
Get fucked.
You white women and your suicidal empathy isn't what's going to take America down.
We won't allow allow it.
All Muslims need to die.
SIGNY:
IT'S NOT EMPATHY.
Here's what's going on with you SIX.
JUST LIKE TED BUNDY JR HERE, YOU'RE SCARED.
You can't engage MEANINGFULLY in the topic bc it scares you.
Instead, you get angry and aggressive because ...
Being angry and aggressive makes you feel STRONG, IN CONTROL, POWERFUL instead of HELPLESS, WEAK, AND FEARFUL.
Personally, I think your overblown fear to certain issues (Muslims, Covid, AIDS) is just displacement.
Look at how your anger bleeds over from Muslims to blacks to illegal aliens to "them"!
Your blind anger about SOME things is a relief valve for all the OTHER things that make you feel insecure. And god knows, there are plenty of them, including the overall job situation of white males without a college degree. (IRAN ISN'T ONE OF THEM.)
And because you LIKE the feeling of being POWERFUL AND RIGHTEOUS AND ANGRY, you refuse to give it up. You believe these "issues" don't immediately threaten your health or finances, so they're safe to be stupid about.
Just contrast how you reacted to pneumonia, diabetes, and your floodplain issues. THOSE were scary, but you gathered as much info as you could to genuinely control your situation as best you could, even tho some of it left you with a little PTSD.
I guess I can't expect you to be rational all the time. You've got enough to deal with.
SECOND:
Signym, you made this about 6ix. You are old enough and have wide enough experience to generalize to the tens of millions in the USA behaving/feeling/voting the way 6ix does, going all the way back to the beginning of politics in the Roman Empire or, maybe, caveman society. Guys like him have held back civilization's progress and promoted war because they are fearful of everything, all the time, everywhere.
OMG, SECOND, you have no self awareness at all. None!
I try not to generalize to entire categories of people like you and SIX do. If I did, I'd say that everyone with TDS is an arrogant sociopath.
And I can understand why many average Americans are angry and fearful. Our whole economy and society has been warped to benefit the wealthiest.
But since YOUR life is going so well, YOU SAY, what's YOUR excuse for being a hate-filled warmongering asshole?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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SIX, I'm going to make one more attempt on reality checking you.
First, I'm not saying that many Muslims aren't a threat to western culture and society. Many are.
Europe and Britain made a HUGE mistake when they allowed in, and Merkel INVITED IN, millions of military-aged men as refugees from the most (IMHO) ignorant, degenerate, culturally maladaptive regions of the Middle East (now called west Asia BTW), central Asia, and North Africa.
WTH were they thinking???? That the immigrants would immediately see the superiority of western culture and adopt it???
I honestly don't know how they correct that mistake, assuming it WAS a mistake and not some globalist plan to destroy European living standards and society! That "refugee" policy needs to end, imams that preach takeover should be deported immediately, and women and children need to learn the national language so they're don't depend on the local Muslim mafia for translation services and access to shops etc.
BTW, Biden's decontrolled border/ invite in illegal immigrants mirrors Europe's invitation to Muslim "refugees".
And SOME radical Muslims, the Takfiri/ Wahhabist branch of Sunni Islam (which is pretty large) are an actual terrorist threat. Of course, they need to be found and punished thru law.
So let's not CONTINUE to carry on with Biden's and Europe's policies! It's pols like Biden and Merkel who're the real enemy.
But when you get all paranoid and start gibbering about ALL Muslims, you're setting yourself up for failure and significant blowback.
The people of Iran, primarily Shia Persians, are culturally friendly to the west. Their Shia branch of Islam focuses on resistance, NOT AGGRESSION, thanks to their history of having been betrayed and slaughtered by their Sunni "brethren". They are not terrorists. Even when being attacked with (western supplied) chemical weapons, they didn't respond in kind. They're proud of their culture, history, and language (Farsi, not Arabic) which goes much farther back than the bandit tribes of Saudi Arabia.
And many primarily Muslim nations don't even follow Sharia law. https://factually.co/fact-checks/society/do-all-muslim-countries-follo
w-sharia-law-969289
When you make an enemy of Iranians, you're making an unnecessary one, and when you make an enemy of ALL Muslims that's just dysfunctional and counterproductive.
As far as I'm concerned, Muslims can have their cultural and religious quirks, as long as they practice them in THEIR country, not here! We should DEFINITELY impose our language and moral/ legal structure on people living here, and jail those who harm us and deport those who preach otherwise.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Trump Just Gave Us a Horrible New Reason to Worry About the Iran War
The president is getting frustrated that U.S. military strikes are accomplishing nothing—and he’s starting to lash out.
By Michael Tomasky | July 24, 2026 | 9:52 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/213486/trump-iran-war-horrible-new-reason
-worry
Donny is frustrated. The Wall Street Journal reports that at a recent White House meeting, President Trump “launched into a tirade against Iranian leaders, calling them scumbags and lunatics, and unleashing a series of expletives.” He is worried that the war is “consuming his presidency.” He doesn’t understand why those silly mullahs don’t understand that he’s Mr. Art of the Deal.
One administration official told the paper that Trump sees few good options besides continuing these daily strikes. But these strikes apparently aren’t having much impact, either militarily or psychologically. The Journal also reported this week that satellite images show that Iran is rebuilding the damage done by U.S. strikes and is doing so fast. And after all, if Iran were afraid of the U.S., it wouldn’t have broken the ceasefire earlier this month by striking commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Some wars start big. World War I is the paradigmatic example. Europe was more or less at peace, the Balkans excepted, all those inbred cousins lolling in their palaces as various ethnic and proletarian resentments built among their people. Then, boom, one event—the assassination of a Hapsburg potentate—exploded the powder keg, and within weeks, millions were mobilized into a war that said cousins blithely thought would last a few weeks but ended up leaving an entire generation of young European men physically and psychologically strafed.
But most wars start small. They’re incremental. Even the most destructive war in human history started this way. Of course, Adolf Hitler was lying to the world about his ultimate aims, when he kept saying—after the Alsace, after Austria, after the Sudetenland—that he had no further territorial claims on Europe. But chronologically, the war proceeded in small, incremental steps, and even if Neville Chamberlain has gone down in historical shame, it’s also true that the broader public could have been forgiven for thinking, even after Munich, that world war was hardly inevitable.
In the current case, I’m sure Donald Trump no more anticipated that this war would prove problematic than Lyndon Johnson did with respect to Vietnam or George W. Bush did vis à vis Iraq. These things are always supposed to be easy for the mighty United States.
But somehow they rarely are. Only George H.W. Bush successfully prosecuted a short war. Why? Because the Persian Gulf War had one very specific and contained goal: force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. One can agree or disagree with his decision to launch the war, but at least it was aimed at doing one and only one small and specific thing. The neocons were imploring him to march on to Baghdad. He said no, you people are crazy. Then his dumb son got to the White House, and he put the crazies (led by Dick Cheney) in charge, and they launched a war based not on one specific goal but on a theory—that regime change in Iraq would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
Do we think Trump gave these matters two minutes’ worth of thought before he decided to start this war? We know the answer to that question. Of course he didn’t. Because to Trump, the laws of history don’t apply to him. He’s different. And Benjamin Netanyahu, who according to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan did the lion’s share of the work of convincing Trump to do this, knew perfectly how to feed Trump’s vanity and take advantage of his total historical ignorance.
So now, Trump is frustrated, like a little boy whose Christmas toy won’t work. That frustration is key here, and much, sadly (I hope not tragically), hangs on it. Will he be content to keep launching strikes that aren’t accomplishing much? Eventually, it seems, the odds are that he’ll get ti
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Even Trump Can’t Spin This One
You can’t post your way out of a war.
By Charlie Warzel | July 25, 2026, 7 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/trump-iran-war-social-m
edia/688065/
If President Trump has one true skill, it is conjuring up alternate realities and getting his supporters to accept them. The examples are everywhere: dismissing stories he doesn’t like as “fake news” from corrupt media, casting the January 6 rioters as victims, election denial. After he baselessly insisted that there had been rampant mail-in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 11 states made mail-voting access more restrictive. His repeated false claims in 2024 that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets led to real threats against the community. Trump builds a world, and by virtue of his power and influence, all of us end up living in it in some way or another.
That era may be coming to a close, in large part because of the way he and his administration have bungled the war in Iran. Trump seems unable to spin this conflict, divert sufficient attention away from it with a new controversy, or end it outright. His social-media posts, which once acted as a de facto assignment editor for the mainstream media, no longer command the same attention or respect. Now, interspersed with AI slop and inexplicable middle-of-the-night reposting binges, Trump’s Truth Social screeds sound more like the fevered ramblings of a radicalized Facebook uncle. For the past five months, he’s been trying to convince the American public (or at least his Truth Social followers) that the war is over, or ending, or a rousing success. His administration is even retroactively changing on the Pentagon’s website the number of American service members who have died in the conflict. But no one seems to be falling for it. His posts don’t have the juice. His alternate universe is no match for the harsh reality of war.
In the Trumpian vision of the world, the U.S. invasion of Iran was not only necessary but also urgent: In February, Trump alleged that Iran was attempting to rebuild its nuclear-weapons program and had continued developing long-range missiles that were threatening U.S. allies and could reach the United States “soon.” But Trump’s claim is dubious, at least according to a March 2025 U.S. intelligence assessment, which noted that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Experts also cast doubt on the strength of Iran’s missiles: “There is little evidence that Iran could build missiles that reach the United States in the near future,” Emma Sandifer of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation told FactCheck.org in March.
Justifications aside, the attacks, which were not authorized by Congress, were immediately unpopular with Trump’s base, which elected him in part for his isolationist tendencies. (On Election Night 2024, Trump even remarked, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”) Iran’s predictable retaliation, closing the Strait of Hormuz and drastically cutting off crucial supply routes for oil and other natural resources, subsequently drove up prices for goods around the world—immediately exacerbating the unpopularity of the conflict and shocking the markets. The fallout appeared to take Trump by surprise, and in the early weeks of the war, he used his bully pulpit for damage control: On March 9, with Brent-crude futures spiking to nearly $120 a barrel, he gave an interview to CBS News suggesting that the “war is very complete, pretty much.” Oil futures swiftly plunged to less than $90 a barrel.
Trump used this tactic repeatedly. On March 20, he posted on Truth Social that the U.S. was “close to meeting our objectives” in Iran. Oil futures dropped. On March 23, he signaled that discussions between the U.S. and Iran were productive, leading Brent crude futures to plummet by 13 percent. Each time, Trump offered no real proof of his claims, yet markets responded to his version of the story. An NBC News analysis found 32 examples of the president suggesting that the war was coming to a clo
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Trump said it himself in June—military force won’t open the waterway, and energy reserves are quickly winding down.
By Thomas Wright | July 25, 2026, 7 AM ET
Thomas Wright served as the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/07/iran-war-hormuz-stra
it/688062/
Back in June, at the closing press conference for the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, Donald Trump explained why he had called a halt to hostilities with Iran. Continued bombing would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and as long as the war went on, commercial ships would stay away while emergency oil supplies dwindled.
“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” he warned, conjuring up images of shortages, bedlam, surging prices, and a market collapse on the scale of 1929. Trump told the press that he had studied presidents, and “the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover.” https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conf
erence-g7-summit-evian-france-june-17-2026/
Fast-forward to late July. The United States has bombed Iran for nearly two weeks, hitting coastal-surveillance sites and weapons-storage facilities as well as bridges, tunnels, rail lines, airports, and electrical infrastructure. Iran has answered with missiles and drones aimed at American bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar, as well as strikes on oil installations and a desalination plant, and repeated attacks on commercial shipping in and around the strait. Iran also claims to have struck Amazon’s cloud-computing infrastructure in Bahrain, but this has not been independently verified.
Trump resumed the war despite having already explained why military force could not achieve its most pressing objective. He has not resolved this tension. It may be irresoluble. In the meantime, he is betting that Tehran will buckle before economic pressure forces him to do the same.
To understand where we are, consider how the cease-fire collapsed. Each party believed that it had won the war and that the other should accede to its interpretation of the agreement on the strait. Article 5 of the memorandum of understanding stated that Iran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.” The Trump administration took this to mean that Iran was obligated to open the strait without tolls for 60 days. But Tehran read it as permission to manage and control access through the waterway. Consequently, Iran sought to funnel ships through corridors it approved, and attacked or threatened vessels that used other routes.
In doing so, Tehran made a serious error in judgment. If it had laid low, it could have reaped the benefits of economic concessions for 60 days and then gradually introduced a toll. Instead, Trump felt compelled to respond, and the agreement broke down. Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser for energy and investment under President Biden, told me that Iran had thought it could boil the proverbial American frog, but it turned the temperature up too high too fast, and the frog got angry.
Trump is clearly frustrated. Further escalation is likely. He has mused about striking Pickaxe Mountain and is reportedly considering limited ground operations—for example, seizing Kharg Island, which is a hub for Iran’s oil exports. The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States is sending more forces, medics, and weaponry to the Middle East to give Trump additional military options. But such options were ruled out as implausible or reckless during the war, and their viability has not improved with time.
If Trump continues with limited strikes, he will face the very problems that he laid out in France last month. Hochstein posted on X that the current escalation in the Strait of Hormuz could be more economically dangerous than the previous one, because Russia, the U.S., and China can no lo
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