World News

Why did Iran close the Strait to begin with? Well, because Trump declared war against Iran just over a month ago, assassinating that country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, for an opening salvo. Why did Trump start bombing Iran without provocation? Well, because according to the New York Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump that winning a war against Iran would be a cakewalk. Why did Trump believe Netanyahu’s pitch when even Secretary of State and human footstool Marco Rubio — Marco Rubio! — called the plan “bulls—t”? Because Donald Trump is the stupidest asshole to ever live, a fact that Iran has now exploited to cow America just as swiftly as Trump thought he might cow them.

Every war is, at its core, a self-inflicted wound. This wound just happens to be so wide, the Artemis II astronauts could still see it from the dark side of the moon. It’s a decisive loss for the United States and one that, hopefully, portends many great electoral losses to come for the people who orchestrated it.

Despite its relatively brief duration, the War on Iran has been nearly half a century in the making. That country officially became a theocracy back in 1979, under the rule of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In the midst of Khomeini’s revolution, Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy and took 66 Americans hostage, including diplomats, triggering a crisis that lasted well over a year and left deep enmity between our two countries in its aftermath. There are active government officials in America who have, quite literally, wanted to destroy Iran my whole life.

But because Iran is the 17th-largest country in the world, because it has a population of nearly 100 million, and because it controls a good portion of the world’s fuel needs, previous presidents never succumbed to the idea. Until now. Rampant Islamophobia within the United States, especially after the 9/11 attacks — which, it must be noted, Iran had no involvement in — has allowed our most hawkish politicians to keep the specter of the Iran bogeyman alive in the public consciousness. All they needed was a useful idiot in the Oval Office to make the war happen.

Enter Donald Trump.

Once Trump assumed office for a second time, hawks saw their best, and perhaps last, chance to make war with Iran a reality. Among those war pigs was Netanyahu, who orchestrated the ongoing genocide in Palestine and has used America’s entry into Iran as permission to go ahead and bomb other countries in the Middle East, Lebanon in particular. According to that Times report from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Netanyahu told Trump that Iran’s regime would fold like Duke in the Elite Eight, that Iranian leadership would be so crippled by American shelling that they wouldn’t be able to seize control of the vitally important Strait of Hormuz, and that Iranian citizens would greet the U.S. as liberators.

None of those things came to pass. Here’s what happened instead: Iran immediately installed Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ali, as its new supreme leader and took control of the strait. Gas prices soared and global markets went haywire as a result. Then Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps got the shrewd idea to begin charging other nations to use the strait, a passage that had been free to all until the war began.

Then Trump threw a hissy fit online and screamed, “Open the F—kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” promising to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran, a threat that the Iranians openly laughed at. Then Russia and China decided to back Iran, because those guys know a winner when they see one. Then the U.S. military, spending about $500 million a day on the war, ran low on munitions, something Trump was explicitly warned about in the lead-up to the war. Then “Secretary of War” and national disgrace Pete Hegseth did a bunch of evil, embarrassing Pete Hegseth stuff. Then Trump posted his “an entire civilization will die tonight” warning, a truly repulsive act even by his standards. Then, instead of rising up against its own government, as Trump lazily assumed, the citizens of Iran called Trump’s weakass bluff Tuesday night by gathering, by the tens of thousands, around the very bridges and power facilities that Trump had promised to annihilate. They dared the old man to blink.

To the surprise of no one, Trump did. The war is on pause (for now), and Iran not only won the PR campaign, but they’ve also decided to continue charging tolls, in perpetuity, to ships looking to cross the Strait of Hormuz. As of this writing, the country has re-closed the Strait, which White House spokesgoblin Karoline Leavitt denied while, in the same breath, demanding that Iran open it back up again. Oh, and Iran gets to keep its nuclear weapons development program, something that Barack Obama negotiated an end to in 2015 before Trump came along and flushed that agreement down the toilet. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Iran might even receive punitive damages from the U.S. for all the bombing. Given Trump’s negotiating acumen, they probably could have also gotten Alaska thrown into the deal if they had wanted it.