No. of Recommendations: 11
The Strait is closed. That was the objective.
No, it wasn't.
I know you have this theory that Trump wanted oil prices to rise sharply, but I think that's false. Trump doesn't benefit from high oil prices, and he doesn't care whether oil companies do. His personal grift is in making lots of deals in the fantabulously wealthy Gulf states, along with all kinds of other financial and crypto and other shenanigans. He doesn't play in the oil patch and doesn't have a stake in it. And he's not in the business of making other people money, whether they donate to his campaigns or not. And high gas prices are poison to his popularity, and he knows that. There's no reason at all that Trump or his administration would want higher oil prices.
Everything about the prosecution and discussion of this war indicates that they thought it would be a low-cost and quick win. They thought it would be Venezuela 2.0. They'd hit leadership and create an opening for a more pliant junior person to take charge, blow up a bunch of crap so that the pliant person would have sufficient motivation/cover to bend the knee, and then the knee would be bent. That's why they kept predicting a 4-6 week timetable, and why they kept insisting they were on schedule with that 4-6 week timetable. They never would have done that if they even anticipated - much less intended - the Strait to be closed for any length of time.
It's always more comforting to think that things are going to plan, even if the plan is terrible (I think that was the Joker in TDK, but I can't remember). But that's not what's happening here. This is an unintended outcome, not the objective.
