We noted in Part 1that when confronted with the failure of 44 days of bombing Iran “back-to-the-stone-age”and, also, thankfully, being reluctant to send American boots into a Gallipoli-scale slaughter on the ground, the Donald turned to his goofy Secy of Treasury for a 4-D chess move.
To wit, a blockade of the Gulf of Oman, which commenced on April 13th. The latter was supposed to dry-up Iran’s cash flow from global oil sales and to then fill its oil storage tanks full to the rim, thereby causing the pipelines connecting to its 3.5 million b/d oil production apparatus to back up and then explode in a post-constipationary release.
Alas, the Donald’s genius boy band – also including Pete Hegseth and Little Marco Rubio –forget the elephant in the room. To wit, it was always a question of which of the dueling blockades – Iran’s at the Strait of Hormuz or the US Navy’s outside of the SOH on the Gulf of Oman – would run out of time first.
However, you only had to know a little bit about the world’s 103 million barrel per day petroleum supply, demand and storage system, and a tad more about oilfield engineering, production management and storage systems, to realize that there was never a doubt as to the outcome.
Namely, that the true-believers who run Iran, and in the face of an existential threat to their regime, were destined to outlast the world economy’s ability to function without the Persian Gulf’s massive flows of hydrocarbons and its derivatives. These crucial ingredients of global economic life ordinarily transit the Strait of Hormuz (SOH) to the tune of 30 million BOEs (barrels of oil equivalent) each and every day.
Of course, the truth is that the Donald is lazy, impatient and impulsive—and therefore is always ready to run with a factoid or cockamamie notion that suits his purposes at the moment. And regardless of whether it happens to be true, valid, plausible and or even rational.
So when the know-it-all but actually clueless Wall Streeter at the Treasury Department tried to horn-in on the Big Boys action in the White House Situation Room by stumping up his “Operation Economic Fury”, the Donald was all ears. He then assuredly announced that Bessent’s brilliant idea would soon be giving the term “silver bullet” a wholly new definition – even as he patted himself on the back for making it possible:
“The blockade is genius. The blockade has been 100% foolproof. It shows how good our Navy is, I can tell you that. Nobody is going to play games. We have the greatest military in the world, andI built much of it during my first term.”
Except. Except. The prowess of the US Navy wasn’t hardly the half of it. In truth, the blockade was really about oil patch engineering. That and the proven resourcefulness of the Iranian regime when it comes to thwarting attacks on its economy after decades of sanctions, embargoes and malicious economic pressures of every kind.
The Donald was apprised of none of this, of course, so naturally he went ball-to-the-walls, exuberantly promoting the efficacy of the blockade.
Source: Antiwar.com
