Strait Jacket

When Iran got attacked, the Iranians took control of and closed the Strait of Hormuz, Trump responded by . . . blocking it?  A blockade of a strait that was already closed?  So no one could pay tolls to the Iranian government that Trump promised he would help the Iranian people overthrow? Blocking blockers?  That don't even make good nonsense.

Then Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz yesterday and Trump said the war would be over soon.  The stock market jumped.  But Trump never bothered to lift the U.S. blockade on the strait, so . . . Iran closed the strait again today and . . . well, apparently Trump made a killing off the killing by manipulating the market and then saying he plans to bomb Iran again soon.

Well, I've long since stopped trying to make sense out of all this, but I know that as long as the strait is closed, the Persian Gulf is the maritime equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - no one goes in, no one comes out.  And since so many resources that make modern civilization function, including oil and helium, come out of the Gulf region, it means that much of the West and a good deal of the rest of the world will suffer really severe shortages of almost everything.  And given Iran's newfound power in the region and the United States' lost credibility, the Omanis and the Emiratis ought to consider a canal across the Musandam Peninsula to bypass the strait . . . though it would take at least a decade or so to even plan it before they could start building it.

Trump won't live long enough to deal with a long-term Iranian domination of the strait.  And that's assuming he even lives to see January 2029.