Trump’s Iran Blunders Suddenly Look Darker After Damning New Leaks Hit
By The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, TNR
For Donald Trump, the news is getting worse on his war against Iran. The New York Times reports that the Trump team badly miscalculated Iran’s response to the American invasion, leading to a developing energy fiasco. The Times also reports that some officials are pessimistic about the lack of any real strategy to end the war, adding this: “They have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.” Their fear of telling Trump the truth about our fix is highly unnerving. We’re also learning that the United States was likely responsible for bombing the Iranian elementary school. We talked to Columbia political scientist Elizabeth Saunders, author of a new piece on this whole mess.
Greg Sargent: For Donald Trump, the news is getting worse on his war against Iran. A preliminary military report finds that the U.S. was behind the bombing of an Iranian nursery school, killing scores of children. New reporting confirms that the Trump team badly miscalculated Iran’s response to their invasion, leading to a developing energy fiasco, with some officials growing pessimistic about the lack of a strategy to finish the war—and they’re afraid to tell that to the president.
Trump is publicly acknowledging none of this. He just urged oil companies to use the Strait of Hormuz regardless of danger, and he’s refusing to comment on how he’ll know when it’s time to end the war. So how do we get out of this situation if Trump’s unwilling to acknowledge the situation we’re in? We’re posing this question to Elizabeth Saunders, a political scientist at Columbia who focuses on foreign policy and has a new piece on the huge mess we’re in. Elizabeth, good to have you on.
Elizabeth Saunders: Thanks. Good to be here.
Sargent: So let’s start with the Strait of Hormuz, which abuts Iran and connects the Persian Gulf to the wider world. Can you define the importance of the Strait of Hormuz in global terms? And how bad is the energy situation right now?
Saunders: So basically this mess is like turning off the spigot that controls 20 percent of the world’s oil flow. It’s like you have running water and then it’s 20 percent less—and it’s all because of this choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. The supply is going down and that sends the price of oil up. And it’s not like a normal oil shock where the Saudis or OPEC can get together and restart production, because these tankers are stuck inside the Persian Gulf. And the Gulf states have already filled up their storage tanks, so they have to shut down the oil fields, which are not easy to restart.
This is one of those shocks that is going to be very hard to get back to any sort of status quo before the war. There’s also no end in sight. This is not like when the container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal—remember istheboatstuck.com? Once the boat is unstuck, the canal reopens. This is not going to be like that, because the Iranians have so much weaponry and power and they’re not going anywhere, because that’s where they live. You now basically have 20 percent of the world’s oil flow held hostage, essentially, by Iran.
Read the full transcript here >
Read also, by Elizabeth N. Saunders: Trump and Rubio dismantled U.S. diplomacy. It’s making the Iran War harder.
