Iran’s Strait of Hormuz Shutdown Highlights the Worth of Trump’s Proclamations

About 19 hours after Donald Trump ended a giddy string of social media posts by announcing that “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again,” Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again.

Tehran’s move not only demonstrates that the two sides keep talking past each other but also that the president’s claims and boasts can be safely disregarded as the wishful thinking of a man living in a fantasy world of his own creation.

Neither bodes well for those hoping that the US and Iran can find an exit ramp from a conflict that has roiled the global economy, i.e., almost everybody on Earth apart from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

As we have noted before, a major issue with the ceasefire deal that expires next week, as well as the talks to end the entire war, is that the negotiating parties are not even remotely on the same page.

This was illustrated again on Friday, when both Iran and Trump announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open to commercial traffic again.

However, Tehran seemed to be under the impression that this also meant that the president would lift its own blockade of the waterway. Conversely, Trump’s avalanche of social media posts made it sound as though the two sides had reached an agreement on Iran’s nuclear deal.

Neither turned out to be true, which makes one wonder why the opening of the Strait was announced in the first place, who is doing the negotiating, and what in the world is going on.

It didn’t take long for Tehran to take issue with Trump’s interpretation of events.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, quickly remarked that the decision of “whether the Strait is open or closed and the regulations governing it” will not be determined by social media.

Of course, he did not use official communications or back channels to convey that message but instead posted on X.

If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be quite funny.

Unfortunately, the wellbeing of countless people hinges on two extremist regimes (three, if we add Israel) with diametrically opposed worldviews coming together to craft a compromise that will allow all of them to proclaim victory.

There is one force that could get Trump to end the conflict quickly: the markets.

If the Dow Jones, i.e., the measure that the president believes gauges the performance of the economy, were to drop sharply and stay down, he would be more amenable to ending the conflict.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen as long as the “experts” on Wall Street keep buying the horse manure he sells them in his social media posts.

It is absolutely insane that stocks keep reaching all-time highs at a time when economic alarms are sounding throughout the US and the world.

It would be one thing if that would somehow benefit regular Americans. Instead, it’s largely enriching those who are already wealthy… and, of course, those “lucky” traders who seem to anticipate Trump’s decisions and announcements and are making millions of dollars off them.