After reports surfaced that Iran had closed the vital Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump told the Iranians who are meeting in Switzerland with Vice President JD Vance, “You close it, and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fucking country.”
On Saturday, Iran announced it was closing the Strait, claiming Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon violated the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed last week to end the war. Trump also threatened to take full control of the Strait and “blow the shit” out of Iran.
From here, things get murky (as they always do in the Middle East).
Our military says the Strait was never closed, that ships continued through without incident.
There are reports that Trump’s threat caused a walkout of the peace talks in Switzerland, but Vance says that the talks went well.
What we do know is that Hezbollah fired on Israel first. We also know that Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran and is funded by the IRGC. And every decent person knows Israel has every right to defend itself, so it was not Israel or the U.S. that first violated the precious MOU; it was the sociopaths in charge of Iran, or the sociopaths in Hezbollah.
Using his Truth Social account, Trump addressed this issue directly. “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble, wrote Trump on Sunday. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”
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Trump obviously wants to put an end to this war. Democrats and the media successfully turned public opinion against it. Gas prices turned public opinion against it. Worse still for the president, due to the sudden and unexpected opportunity to take out most of Iran’s leadership four months ago, there was no opportunity to sell the public on the need to go to war with Iran before the war started.
And now, with the midterms looming, with former Trump backers like Tucker Carlson portraying Trump as a puppet for Israel, and the fact that he’s dealing with an Islamic death cult in Iran, right now, things look as messy as they have ever been.
At the same time, though, through sheer will and U.S. military firepower, Trump has gotten things this far. Iran’s military threat to the outside world is greatly diminished. Iran is even more of an outcast among its Middle East neighbors than before the war. Iran is negotiating. It’s not checkmate for Trump yet, but the Iranians must know that as soon as the midterm votes are counted, they could be dealing with a very different Trump, one who need not worry about his own reelection or another national election of any kind for two years.
This situation is what’s known as “realpolitik.” Yes, sane people wanted Trump to bomb Iran until the IRGC was dust, and those who weren’t dust were sniveling babies begging for an end to the war on any terms. Reality made that impractical, especially the need to start a war before it could be sold to the public.
In the end, only two things will matter: 1) what the peace deal looks like, and 2) Trump’s willingness to enforce any violations of the peace deal with actual bombs and not rhetorical bombs on social media.
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