Right, so Donald Trump decided the best way to make the Strait of Hormuz 'safer' was to lob a few bombs at an Iranian island because nothing screams 'secure shipping lane' quite like a handful of American explosives raining down from the sky.
A few hours later, Iran fired missiles and drones against American positions in Jordan and the UAE. Jordan reported that eight missiles had crossed into its airspace; the UAE responded to an unmanned attack. Ships were avoiding the Strait of Hormuz, and oil prices have exceeded the ninety-dollar mark.
Trump strikes, Iran returns, and the apparently "secured" shipping lane is once again about as free as a nightclub at four o'clock in the morning during a raid.
But as usual with all things Strait of Hormuz adjacent, the truth was somewhere Little Donnie wasn’t and retaliation is a b*tch.
Anyway, let’s start this story properly with this:
"Almost total control," he says. Trump claims the mines are all gone, and oil prices will soon be falling, all in response presumably to his enormous ego because he’s got bu**er all else to be going on. Somebody should let the tanker crews, the underwriters, Jordan, the UAE, and the oil traders know about this edict that now been issued, because Trump's fantasy press office must have forgotten to send them all the necessary memo.
The picture Trump was drawing is of course very simple, because so is he. America has taken out the launchers, America has eliminated the threat, and now America is running the Strait.
But if that were true, why did ships still keep a sharp lookout? Why did the price of oil rise? Why, within hours of Trump's securing the Strait of Hormuz, did two other states have to deal with Iranian missiles and drones aimed at American forces that they happen to host?
If this is "almost total control," I'd hate to see what Trump calls a total disaster. Actually, scratch that-we’ve seen total disaster before, he just never admits to them does he?
At any rate, before going into what Trump hit and what Iran did afterwards, it is necessary to sort out the tanker story first, because two different incidents are currently getting a bit mixed up online, along with many unverified claims.
On Saturday, before the American attack on Larak Island which is of course the bit dominating the mainstream today, a tanker entering the Strait was hit by an unknown projectile about twelve nautical miles north of Khasab, Oman.
The crew were safe; no casualties were reported, and no environmental damage occurred. All very important to know. In particular, no one had identified the projectile's origin though.
The Saturday tanker incident came before the Larak Island strike on Sunday, and Iran's missile and drone response came afterwards, into today, Monday. So it can't really be called a reprisal because the incident occurred before the attack Trump undertook.
Regardless of how much certain tweets or presidential delusions try to deflect it, time marches on. What the tanker does show is the situation Trump was stepping into: a commercial ship had been hit in a waterway that was supposedly secure, and diplomatic efforts were already underway. Trump's solution, as always, was to press the big red button marked "blow something up" and send Larak Island a little American love letter.
Washington claims that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard had prepared rocket launchers that could fire naval mines into the Strait. This was its justification for what came next.
A strike did take place. That is not disputed. The Americans struck two launchers on Larak Island, the first American attack publicly acknowledged for more than a month now.
Washington's version is that the launchers were being prepared to deploy mines, that they were about to do so, and that destroying them removed the danger without creating another, much greater one.
That may be what American surveillance showed. We haven't seen it. Right now, we have only Washington's account, and I don't consider that anything remotely resembling independent verification, given this is the Trump administration.
CENTCOM however upped the ante with a FACT CHECK graphic, insisting Iran was wrong to call being bombed an attack-because America says it was defensive, so obviously it doesn't count. A defensive bomb again, there seems to be a lot of these around these days. Do they come with little shields or something? Perhaps a big D for defensive, but might as well be read s dunce instead? Orwell would be so proud wouldn’t he?
"I only hit him because I thought he was going to hit me. Therefore I didn't really hit him at all." You can hear it come out of a 5 year old, but just as easily from a certain orange eighty-year-old too. The maturity level is on par.
The graphic doesn't prove the mine launch was imminent. It tells us how Washington wants the whole exchange understood and of course the mainstream is dutifully complying: when America fires, that's protection; when Iran fires back, that's escalation.
Whatever CENTCOM believes it stopped on Larak though, this followed within hours.
So much for keeping the danger neatly boxed up on one Iranian island, because of course missiles don’t really care for the PR spin of who they’re being fired at do they?
Iran launched missiles and drones towards sites hosting American forces, just as they have done on many occasions already. Jordan reported eight missiles that entered its airspace and were apparently intercepted. The UAE responded to an Iranian drone over its territorial waters, although it denies Iran's claim that Al Minhad Air Base was struck.
The IRGC claimed to have attacked US-linked military facilities in Jordan with heavy damage. Jordan confirms that eight missiles entered its airspace and were intercepted, independent evidence and verification both ways are lacking at time of writing.
Iran has also claimed strikes on American vessels, the downing of an MQ-9 Reaper drone, rapidly becoming an endangered species as they are and an unnamed supertanker being stopped by naval mines.
Trump authorised an attack beside the world's most important energy chokepoint. Within hours, air defences in Jordan and the UAE were responding to Iranian missiles and drones heading towards American military positions.
More countries dragged into the exchange. More weapons in the air. More chances for something to get through, or for somebody to get it wrong.
All because Trump, in the echo chamber of his own mind and I’m sure the acoustics in his fat orange head must be absolutely fantastic given all the spare room in there, decided he'd made things safer. Safer for whom, exactly? Your guess is as good as mine.
Iranian-linked accounts then claimed an unnamed supertanker had struck two naval mines, caught fire and stopped.
But no one named the ship, and no independent evidence could be checked. It may be a separate incident; it may not be. What it absolutely is not is proof that the tanker near Khasab hit a mine. That was a different report, involving an unknown projectile, and it came before Larak.
Still, the claim matters because shipping companies don't have the luxury of sitting around for three days while users hold a public inquiry about such things.
If there might be mines, missiles or drones around, the risk changes immediately. Crews have to sail through it. Insurers have to price it. Shipowners have to decide whether getting a cargo through is worth the gamble.
You can jam up a shipping lane with fear long before you ever need to drop a single mine. Panic you see moves a lot faster than oil does, and it doesn't need a tanker either.
Over the weekend, shipping data showed only five visible commodity vessels a day passing through Hormuz.
Five a day, through a stretch of water that carried roughly twenty million barrels of oil and petroleum products every day before this crisis. About a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade.
And before somebody says, "Yes, but more oil than that is clearly getting through," the answer is yes, it is.
TankerTrackers' have reported a figure of 6.7 million-barrels, but that figure is not simply a count of ships broadcasting their location. It combines ordinary AIS signals with satellite imagery, visually identified tankers travelling with their transponders off, and vessels that only switch AIS back on after leaving the US blockade line.
So it estimates crude volume moving through that wider area, including hidden traffic. It is not a count of visible ships, and it is not a figure for Iranian exports alone either.
All this tells us is that plenty of oil is still slipping through, therefore Trump's blockade is about as watertight as a sieve, all whilst commercial traffic is so spooked by it all that ships would rather play hide-and-seek with satellites than admit to where they are.
The blockade is hurting Iran. Of course it is. The rial has been hammered, ships have been redirected, and trade has been disrupted.
But hurting Iran and controlling the Strait of Hormuz are not the same thing. Trump keeps talking as if he's done both.
He absolutely, categorically, has not.
So then there's the price of all this.
After the Larak fireworks and Iran's reply, Brent crude shot back above ninety dollars. Oil prices, naturally, bounce around like caffeinated ferrets on a trampoline, Trump just has a habit of helping them defy gravity more and more.
What it did was put the danger back into the price straight away. More risk around Hormuz means dearer insurance, dearer shipping and pressure on fuel costs.
That bill eventually lands on all of us, the ordinary people, who had no say in the matter.
No mines there now, he says.
Well, CENTCOM says it had to bomb Iran because more mines were supposedly about to be fired into the Strait. Oman is still talking to Tehran because shipping access has not been sorted out. Tankers are still hiding. Regional states are still responding to missiles and drones. The oil market is still charging extra for all of this Trump and Netanyahu driven danger.
If America had solved Hormuz, Oman wouldn't still be trying to negotiate with Iran over how ships can pass through it. So Iran is plainly in charge otherwise Oman would be dealing with Trump. We know he’s stupid, it’s the fact these people think we are all even stupider that gets my goat.
You can blow up a launcher. You can turn ships around. What you can't do is bomb the map into submission, or command every captain, insurer, and oil trader to feel safe just because you demand it. Stamp your tiny feet in another toddler tantrum all you like, it changes nothing.
And in situations like this, you can always rely on Trump to somehow manage to make the situation worse and himself look an even bigger dumba** than he did before.
Violent, evil people. Oh just sob into a hankie about the mean nasty man that won’t let you have the Strait and be done with it.
Cry me a river, or a Strait, heck there’s the Welland Canal now too isn’t there, though Canada haven’t closed that one quite yet, give Trump’s mouth and sharpie pen a bit longer, I wouldn’t rule it out yet.
But once you've reduced an entire country to that, you never have to explain your own decisions again do you, though we’ve seen how angry Trump gets when someone dares to try and ask him to. Every American strike is defensive. Every Iranian response starts from that exact moment. Everybody living under the missiles, flying the interceptions or sailing the tankers can be edited out to suit.
None of this means Iran's government gets a free pass. It doesn't. Its claims about damaged bases and mined ships need evidence though. Threatening commercial shipping is reckless.
But Iran being reckless doesn't magically make Trump sensible, no matter how much he wants us all to pick a side, preferably his and if we don’t he’ll sulk. Aww.
He chose to attack Larak. He chose to present Washington's story about an imminent missile launch as if the gods of independent verification had signed off on his every word. Then he declared the Strait under control while ships were hiding, Oman was negotiating, and Iranian weapons were heading for American targets. And since reality stubbornly refused to hand him the crushing victory he wanted to brag about, Trump just conjured one up for himself instead. Well, less conjured, more manufactured.
Trump posted a video showing Iran's Kharg Island oil hub being, in his words, blown to smithereens.
Very dramatic. Massive explosions. Exactly the sort of thing President Action Man will command and make so.
Except it wasn't real was it Donnie?
There's no evidence whatsoever that Trump had ordered a new attack on Kharg Island. Iran's national oil company said work there was carrying on.
So while the actual shipping lanes remain dangerous, absolutely, real air defences scrambled for real missiles, and real oil traders jacked up the price, Trump was busy online, sharing a cartoon Iranian island going up in smoke. I mean it doesn’t look remotely real does it? It’s hardly cutting edge AI? How much water did you waste on that one?
Honestly, you couldn't script a more perfect summary of his presidency.
Sorting out Hormuz properly would mean diplomacy, restraint and reaching an arrangement with people who don't take orders from Donald Trump. That's so difficult for this imbecilic individual he literally cannot comprehend the concept of someone ignoring him and posting nineteen seconds of computer-generated kabooms and pretending the target island he’s been threatening for months has vanished is a lot easier. Go back to sharing Canada Geese with your hair on them, or Donald Duck’s as they’re now called.
In the real world though, Larak was followed by Iranian retaliation, more regional military activity and no return to normal shipping, it’s just been screwed again, by you at your instigation. In Trump's world though he’s sure we’ll all believe that Kharg Island vanished in a ball of pixels, and everybody was supposed to cheer him. What was that thud I just heard, another drop in the polls was it?
Trump wanted this story to end the moment America hit Larak.
The launchers were gone, the mines had been swept, Hormuz was under his control, and cheap oil would soon be whistling over the horizon.
Job done. Everybody home.
Only none of it is based in reality. Iran retaliated as they always do when struck first. Jordan and the UAE found themselves responding to the fallout, still hosting US assets as they do. Ships still had reasons to hide, Oman still had reasons to be concerned and certainly to continue to negotiate, and the oil market has been handed a reminder as to why it should remain nervous and when they get nervous, we pay more.
The only universe where Trump got everything he wanted was the one a computer spat out for him on demand. At every other turn he’s been handed his a*se here.
He tried to bomb Hormuz into submission yet again, we surely must be in Einstein’s definition of insanity territory here now. All he has got iss Iranian retaliation, more danger for commercial shipping, and oil back above ninety dollars. When reality refused to hand him the victory he'd already announced he’d scored, he just invented one on ChatGPT. A fake island in flames for a fraud of a President. It ought to be Trump’s Presidential obituary at this point.
For more of the tangerine toddlers stupidity in the Middle East, do stick with the channel, he gets a spanking for being naughty around here, another example right here for your next viewing pleasure.
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