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Friends,
Trump’s war with Iran is back on, but in reality it never ended.
Renewed attacks by both sides this weekend continued today with new Iranian assaults on U.S. military bases and assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Oman.
This prompted Trump to declare that the U.S. will take over the Strait of Hormuz, reintroduce its naval blockade of Iranian ports, and, for the first time, charge a 20 percent fee on maritime cargo, mirroring Iran’s tolls on traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
(Didn’t Marco Rubio say less than three weeks ago that charging tolls on international waterways violates international law?)
Oil prices have already risen about 5 percent. Although they’re still below this spring’s highs, American consumers will surely be hit by steadily higher prices for gas and for food (because food production depends on fertilizer and many components of fertilizer also depend on ships moving through the strait).
The new fighting was inevitable because the so-called “memorandum of understanding” signed by the U.S. and Iran on June 17 reopened the Strait of Hormuz on the condition that Iran was in control of it.
The memo said Iran would “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the strait. Conspicuously missing from the agreement was any guarantee that ships could safely sail any portion of the strait.
It prohibited the charging of tolls or fees for only 60 days while negotiations toward another agreement continued.
The final line of the memorandum formally ceded to Iran a central role in managing the strait: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.”
This is what we get with a president who’s desperate to get gas prices down before the midterm elections, a vice president who knows nothing about negotiating treaties and insists “we have all the cards” when the deck is loaded for the other side, a secretary of defense only capable of ordering more bombs be dropped, and a State Department that isn’t even at the table.
So what now? Iran is suffering economic pain but it’s a fierce dictatorship, so it’s willing to endure pain to hold on to its trump card — control over the strait.
But America is still a democracy and we’re not willing to endure a lot of pain simply to restore the status quo we had before the brainless egomaniac in the Oval Office decided to attack Iran.
We’ll start voting in three months, and most of us can be expected to vote out the bums in Congress who have supported him. Then Congress can pass a resolution revoking Trump’s power to pursue this costly and unnecessary war, which is the only way to end it.
Unless, of course, he converts us into a dictatorship before then.
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