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    Iran War: Trump Threatens Destruction of Iran Electric Generation and Oil Wells Even as WSJ Reports Temporary TACO on Trying to Force Open Strait of Hormuz

    idc2000@protonmail.comBy No Comments13 Mins Read
    Iran War: Trump Threatens Destruction of Iran Electric Generation and Oil Wells Even as WSJ Reports Temporary TACO on Trying to Force Open Strait of Hormuz

    [This Iran war post launched before complete because reasons. Please come back at 8:00 AM EDT or refresh your browser then for a final version]

    The Trump Administration continues to lash out even as the global economy suffers more and more catastrophic damage. The continued effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is ever increasing damage to nations all over the globe due to deepening shortfalls of crude oil, LNG, and products that depend either on oil or LNG for production, like urea (meaning food), plastics, many pharmaceutical and helium, or need affordable energy/fuels to operate, like airlines and chemical plants.

    Contradictory messaging from the Trump Team has hit the point of absurdity. Recall Trump’s April 6 deadline for Iran to capitulate or face devastation is still in play. Trump doubled down on that by threatening again to engage in war crimes:1

    Iran War: Trump Threatens Destruction of Iran Electric Generation and Oil Wells Even as WSJ Reports Temporary TACO on Trying to Force Open Strait of Hormuz

    Presumably, those who have attention spans longer than those of goldfish recall that Trump made similar threats with his initial 48 hour, then 5 day, now April 6 deadlines. The manhood-preserving defense for these delays was the time it took to get forces to make a ground assault in theater.

    Yet as those servicemembers are still either arriving or waiting, the Wall Street Journal published this story:

    But it quickly becomes clear that Trump is simply trying to reshuffle the deck of his non-options. From the article:

    President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely

    closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.

    In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.

    There are also military options the president could decide on, but they aren’t his immediate priority, they said.

    The only possible logic here is that if the Administration can show more progress in degrading Iran, at the same time, real economy pressures on the UK, EU, Japan and South Korea will become so acute that they will be compelled by domestic pressure to participate in a US naval operation to force the Strait of Hormuz open. It is entirely conceivable that Trump believes that opening the Strait of Hormuz would be easy if enough warships participated.

    Notice that this sunny scenario also ignores that even if Iran is by some measures degraded further, its comparative advantage compared to the US and Israel continues to increase as their kit of pricey, hard-to-replace weapons systems continues to fall to catastrophically low levels even as Iran looks to be firing at a rate that it can easily sustain into 2027, if not indefinitely.

    In the meantime, the normally Trump-friendly Journal quickly clears its throat and points out the dire real-world consequences of the latest Trump gambit:

    The longer the strait remains closed, the more it will roil the global economy and boost gas prices. Multiple countries, including U.S. allies, are reeling from the downturn in energy supply that once flowed freely through the chokepoint. Industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips are suffering from shortages.

    Without a swift return to safe passages, Tehran will continue to threaten world trade until the U.S. and its partners either negotiate a deal or forcibly end the crisis, analysts say..

    The U.S. and Israel started the war together and can’t walk away from the fallout, [Suzanne] Maloney [Iran expert at Brookings] said. “Energy markets are inherently global, and there is no possibility of insulating the U.S. from the economic damage that is already occurring and will become exponentially worse if the closure of the strait continues.”

    Trump had a further hissy. From the BBC live blog page:

    The source:

    And shortly thereafter, another fit of pique:

    A fresh sighting….and even if merely a function of bidding as Bloomberg suggests, could this also have the effect of increasing pressure on Europe? Readers with insight, please pipe up.

    But does the stable genius Trump recognize where this goes, particularly if a cover for an ungraceful exit?

    Patricia Marins has gotten early word of the Trump plan to change the goalposts to facilitate an exit and identified additional impediments:

    And remember Israel has been doing and will continue to do everything it can to stymie a US abandonment.

    The Journal also confirms that troop movements into theater are still in progress, with the USS Tripoli and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit having just arrived, elements of the 82nd Airborne assembling plus Trump having recently talked up bringing in 10,000 more in ground forces.

    So what to make of this? Just before the Murdoch paper’s exclusive broke, Larry Johnson told Pascal Lottaz that he had heard from contacts in the military that there was no plan. 2

    Bloomberg’s landing page did not give the Journal story leading play:

    Mind you, it is in the summary in the live feed:

    • US gasoline climbs to an average $4 for the first time since August 2022
    • Donald Trump mulls exiting war without reopening Strait of Hormuz: WSJ
    • Iran fires missiles at Israel and also hits a Kuwaiti oil tanker
    • US equity futures rise while Asian stocks fall; oil fluctuates

    And the summary of prominently headlined story a bit further down the page on oil rising to $200 if the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively blocked:

    • Oil may surge to $150 or $200 a barrel if the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz persists over the next six to eight weeks because of the Iran war, according to energy-market consultancy FGE NexantECA.
    • Chairman Emeritus Fereidun Fesharaki said every week, 100 million barrels of oil is not going through, and every month, 400 million barrels are not going through, and these losses to the market will be astronomical.
    • Fesharaki dismissed the effectiveness of verbal interventions, saying the physical reality of supply disruptions will ultimately drive prices, and the market will choke, and the prices will go up.

    So what to make of all of this?

    First, this is part of a well-established Trump pattern, of putting off decisions and actions whenever possible and particularly when pressures, while still trying to find ways to look and act dominant and hopefully open up new options that way. But the walls are closing in. Neither flailing about nor delay will give Trump new operating room.3

    Second, the massively impulsive Trump may have been talking out loud or even just trying new barker’s patter to keep Mr. Market from going into freakout mode.

    Trump may actually be pursing the insane scheme of trying to remove Iran’s enriched uranium. From a highly informative if deceptively chatty talk between Wilkerson and Stanislav Krapivnik.

    Wilkerson describing overall versus deployable force levels and warning that Israel has told Trump where the Iranian enriched uranium is, and adding:

    And if I were Trump and I believed that, I’d kick myself in the ass all the way down Fifth Avenue [clears throat] because Israelis have been very wrong on so many things up to this point. 4

    Trita Parti came to the same conclusion as Chas Freeman did as soon as the press reported that Trump was moving a relatively small number of special forces into theater for a ground operation or raid:

    Freeman had pointed out that capturing these islands should be within the capability of these units without running undue risk and would also have strategic value by making the UAE happy. If you click though, you will see that Parsi adds that some Israel backer in the US have pumped for this move, and there could be an additional benefit:

    But the GCC has a unified position on the three islands in support of the UAE. Making the war about the islands may be motivated by an attempt to push Oman and Qatar in support of the US/Israeli war, but under the false rubric that it is now about “liberating” the islands.

    However, Parsi also cautions that even if the US can seize these islands, holding on to them is another matter.

    Some kinetic war updates:

    This History Legends presentation goes well beyond the RUSI report we featured recently. Pleaee ignore his penny stock paid promotion; he does need to pay for his overheads. The discussion includes revealig detail like Gulf states wasting Patriots by setting them to auto fire mode and shooting at a lot of Iran decoys as a result.

    Daniel Davis continues to channel his inner Walter Cronkite, here decrying Trump’s enthusiasm for war crimes:

    Davis has also made this point regularly but it can’t be said often enough:

    The problem with denials like this is that the initial report takes hold in the minds of most and is not readily displaced:

    On Israel’s deteriorating situation:

    And from Hindustan Times:

    And on other fronts, from Bloomberg’s live feed overnight:

    Iran’s National Security Committee has approved a bill that would impose fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, citing a committee member. The bill, if it becomes law, would:

    • Impose a toll system in rials
    • Ban passage of US and Israeli vessels through the strait
    • Assert Iran’s sovereignty over the strategic waterway
    • Ban any country that imposes unilateral sanctions against Iran.

    Oman is slated to help shape the legal framework, Fars said.

    Asking for payment ir rial make a huge amount of sense. It will create demand for the currency. Recall that the Bessent raid and resulting high costs for merchants triggered the initially peaceful protests. It also keeps China from being more involved than necessary.

    Ben Panga found additional detail from Fars News Agency Telegram inParliament Security Committee approves plan to impose tolls on Strait of Hormuz :

    🔹A member of the National Security Commission announced the approval of the Strait of Hormuz Management Plan in this commission.

    The key areas of this plan are as follows :
    🔹Strait security arrangements
    🔹Ship safety
    🔹Environmental issues
    🔹Financial arrangements and rial toll systems
    🔹Ban on Americans and the Zionist regime from passing through
    🔹Implementing the sovereign role of Iran and the armed forces
    🔹Cooperation of the esteemed country of Oman in the structure of the legal regime
    🔹Ban on countries participating in unilateral sanctions against Iran

    The contradictions in Trump’s own messaging and that of his team are managing to reach new levels:

    And to add to Trump fantasies:

    Larry Johnson opined by e-mail this might be a gambit to try to discredit Ghalibaf.

    Done for now. See you tomorrow.

    ____

    1 It is precious to see Marco Rubio in particular carry on about Iran violating international law via its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz after the US has repeatedly and loudly embraced a might-makes-right, blood-and-claw foreign policy replacing our prettier and actually at times constrained “rules based order”.

    2 Please do not try arguing that Team Trump has brilliant a plan. Connecting dots that don’t connect NO1 (hat tip Aurelien):

    There’s this theory that’s making the rounds. You’ve probably seen it.

    ….Setting aside each individual step, the theory has a fundamental architectural flaw: it assumes sequential execution without adversarial adaptation…

    And above all – it assumes Trump even has a plan.

    A detailed, multi-year, sequenced geopolitical strategy with coherent endgame objectives. The man who announced Canadian tariffs via social media at 11pm, who publicly feuded with Canada’s prime minister while needing Canada as a “diplomatic bridge” in this very theory. The man whose administration has contradicted itself on Venezuela policy multiple times in the same week.

    The moves are real. The chaos is real. Connecting them into a master plan is seductive precisely because it offers the one thing the current moment doesn’t: the comfort that someone, somewhere, knows what they’re doing.

    3 Forgive a cinematic interlude but I am reminded of a scene where Michael Clayton has to tell a large client of his firm that there is no good way out of the mess he created for himself:

    4 Wilkerson offered insights on Iranian targeting:

    Or someone else on the inside as it were is actually feeding them information because they have been so on with this first tier of targets they hit. We couldn’t have done that. We couldn’t have selected that many targets with that many variations of munitions and different conditions in each of the countries and hit them all the way they did. I mean they didn’t miss a damn thing…. They hit every everything they wanted to hit, they hit…even to the Mossad/CIA underground facility in Erbiel in Kurdistan.

    He also soy Iran destroyed Bahrain’s desalination plant, the biggest in the Middle East. Krapivnik described the considerable time and effort involved in building a new one

    The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Night On The Galactic Railroad (1985) Run Time: 1H 48M

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