Or is it?
Donald Trump is feeling the economic blowback from his [your spin on what this is here] in Iran. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,”Trump said in a phone interview on Monday. Afterwards, markets shot up and the soaring price of oil fell.
The New York Times this morning:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed that Tuesday would be the “most intense day” of American strikes against Iran since the start of the war after President Trump sent mixed signals about a possible end to the conflict.
So is the war that isn’t a war over or isn’t it?
“We have won in many ways, but not enough,” he told a gathering of Republican lawmakers in Florida. Asked later if the war would be over this week, Mr. Trump said, “No.” He said only, “Soon, very soon.”
Where’s that legendary, Trump “truthful hyperbole” now?
Oh, about Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO), Bill Kristol notes at The Bulwark:
Yesterday we saw the mother of all TACO trades. Oil prices were soaring and the market was falling. Then at 3:30 p.m., President Trump told Weijia Jiang of CBS that the war could be over soon: “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” Oil prices promptly plunged and stocks shot up. You could have made a lot of money in that last half hour of trading. For all we know, some Trump insiders did.
But chickening out isn’t a matter of one phone call. It takes time and can be a bit complicated to pull off. And of course Trump won’t acknowledge he’s doing it.
It’s TACO Tuesday at The Financial Times as well:
Sometime soon Donald Trump will ring the closing bell on his Iran war. That moment will have less to do with whether his mission is accomplished (whatever that is) than how much pain he can endure. We can safely assume that Iran’s pain threshold is higher than his. Trump will nevertheless present his exit as a victory. Iran will have every incentive to ensure nobody believes him. That is the crux of his self-inflicted dilemma.
Anticipating this would have served Trump well. One step would have been to build up America’s strategic petroleum reserves, which dropped sharply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and were never replenished. Oil and natural gas prices may have soared but an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure. A second would have been to win the Gulf monarchies round to his war plan in advance. That he had no fixed goal made that difficult. Now he is faced with an increasingly irascible Gulf. A third would have been to prepare the US public for a longer conflict. Ditto.
The question is whether Trump has become aware of the drawbacks of not thinking ahead. Were he on a learning curve, he would know that even a severely degraded Iran can continue to frighten oil tankers from the Gulf and shutter much of the region’s energy production. Short of occupying Iran, Trump cannot guarantee safe passage in the Strait of Hormuz. Drone production is decentralised and hard to eradicate from the air.
Speaking of drones, or at least cruise missiles:
Forbes corrects the record (without meaning to):
What Is The Tomahawk Missile And Who Operates It?
The Tomahawk is an advanced subsonic cruise missile that is primarily launched from submarines and ships and used to conduct precision strikes. The U.S. Navy and the U.K.’s Royal Navy are the main operators of the Tomahawk and in recent years the Japanese and Australian Navies have also agreed to acquire the weapon. Neither Iran or Israel is known to operate the Tomahawk.