First, happy No Kings Day to all who celebrate. I’ll be at one or more of the Denver-area rallies and I’ll put a couple of photos on my BlueSky feed if you’re interested in seeing what’s happening in the mile-high city.
Turning to the war, Josh Marshall flagged this piece in the Hill about Marco Rubio’s trip to meet G7 foreign ministers:
“I did describe to our allies, however, that immediately after this thing ends, and we’re done with our objectives, the immediate challenge we’re going to face is an Iran that may decide that they want to set up a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “Not only is this illegal, it’s unacceptable, it’s dangerous for the world. And it’s important that the world have a plan to confront it.”
Shorter Rubio, “you better be ready to help us unshit the bed we shit by ourselves.” Here’s Marshall’s take on that:
The key here is that the U.S. seems to expect the war to end without any agreement simply not to block the Strait of Hormuz or exact tolls through it, which means claiming sovereignty over it as a kind of inland waterway. There’s really no way to describe this other than conceding that Iran will emerge from the war massively strengthened. We’ve come a long, long way from regime change and unconditional surrender. The other way to view it is that Rubio concedes that Iran will come out of the war massively strengthened and that it’s up to Europe and perhaps some countries in Asia to fix it.
Iran is going to come out of this war with a big part of its country destroyed, but they’ll also have more cash flow (because of oil prices and Hormuz transit fees), and they’ll have more leverage over 20-25% of the world’s oil shipments. Then the US will expect its allies to risk their navies to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open and functioning without any kind of Iranian toll before the war started.
In addition to the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, where a Saudi oil pipeline is being used to load ships that would have normally have been sent through the Persian Gulf, is now under threat by the Houthis, who have joined the fight on behalf of Iran.
Trump casually started a war against a country that doesn’t do anything casually. I’m sure every general officer in the Revolutionary Guard faces towards Mecca five times a day praying that Trump sends Marines and airborne infantry to invade their country. It would be a slaughter.
As for the question of whether the story that this war is a clusterfuck will reach those in the MAGA media bubble, gas prices don’t lie. It sure looks like they’re not going down anytime soon.
