Hormuz Crisis Contradiction: The Strait Is Open. Please Turn Around. 🤣

Since the Islamabad peace talks collapsed last weekend, the situation around the Strait of Hormuz has been doing what this crisis does best: getting worse, then briefly seeming better, then getting worse again. Here’s the dizzying sequence, because the news cycle now operates at the speed of a Trump Truth Social post – which is, terrifyingly, quite fast.

Friday: Iran’s Foreign Minister announced the strait was “completely open” to commercial vessels. Trump, delighted with himself, welcomed the news. Optimism briefly flickered.

Also Friday: Trump clarified the U.S. naval blockade would remain “in full force and effect.” So – open for ships, but also blockaded. A “completely open” waterway they cannot actually use. Perfectly logical. 🙄

Saturday: Less than 24 hours later, Iran’s IRGC closed it again, citing the blockade as a ceasefire violation and warning that any vessel approaching “will be targeted.” Two Indian-flagged tankers were fired upon. A container ship was damaged. A very bad Saturday, all round. 🛢️🔥

Sunday: Trump declared Iran had committed a “Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement” by firing in the strait – then threatened to “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” He signed off: “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” 😬

This, from the man who has been threatening to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” for weeks. One wonders what, exactly, he considers nice.

Table of Contents

The Contradiction Factory 🏭

Here’s the central contradiction that would embarrass a first-year diplomatic student: Trump agreed to a ceasefire on April 7th in exchange for Iran opening the strait. Iran opened the strait. Trump kept the blockade. Iran closed the strait again. Trump called it a ceasefire violation.

Brain?

Hormuz Contracition: The Strait Is Open. Please Turn Around.

He then posted that Iran closing the strait was “strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it – they’re helping us without knowing it.” … so the President is simultaneously accusing Iran of closing a waterway he openly admits he already closed. The CAPS LOCK key remains, apparently, the primary instrument of Trump’s American foreign policy.

Iran’s chief negotiator Ghalibaf was blunt: “It is impossible for others to pass through the Strait of Hormuz while we cannot.”

Infuriating, perhaps. But also – more logical than anything posted on Trump’s Truth Social this week!!

The Threat Inflation Problem 📣

The danger of governing by bluster is that it requires constant escalation. Trump has threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages, blow up “the whole country,” and destroy every bridge and power plant in the nation. Legal scholars call it an “indelible moral stain.”

But here’s the thing: if the threats were credible, the talks wouldn’t be happening. Iran knows it holds leverage – control of a waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil normally flows – and no amount of furious typing changes that.

Some members of Congress have raised the 25th Amendment, which establishes that the Vice President becomes President if the President is removed, and provides procedures for declaring a President unable to serve.. The rest of the world watches, increasingly appalled.

Where Things Stand 🕐

The strait is closed. The ceasefire expires Wednesday. Trump has announced new talks in Islamabad – but Iran says it hasn’t agreed to attend, calling the announcement a pressure tactic. So the U.S. is dispatching a delegation to negotiations that may not exist.

This crisis has been called the largest energy disruption since the 1970s oil shock. It is not an abstract geopolitical drama. It lands in your petrol tank, your grocery bill, your electricity costs. It lands on your dinner table. 😬

On a Lighter Note… 🤣

Scientists are doing an experiment on the human brain to see how much someone can function without certain parts. They remove half the brain and ask the subject to count to ten. He counts “one, three, five, seven, nine“. Fascinated, they put it back and remove the other half, then ask him to count to ten again. He counts “two, four, six, eight, ten.”

Finally, they remove the entire brain and ask him to count to ten one more time. He says:

“I can count to ten, I’m the best with numbers, I have the best numbers, the fake news, they say I can’t count, that’s a lie, they’re wrong, I think, people, when they think about great numbers, I can count, with any numbers, all the time, better than China, better than anyone…“
😂🎺 …remind you of anyone…? 😛