There’s something happening in the Strait of Hormuz. What it is ain’t exactly the Jews. I have expressed my doubts about the the Memorandum of Understanding that was to open the Strait. Complications have arisen. Vice President Vance’s negotiating partners do not appear to be operating in good faith’
I read the news today, oh boy:
US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are in Doha to meet Qatari mediators, but they will not be meeting with Iranian officials, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. Trump had said Monday the US would meet the Iranians today in Doha.
Someone may have blown his mind out in a car in Qatar.
I have expressed my doubts about a few times over the past week or two. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial assessed that “Iran Is Winning the Battle of Hormuz.” It gibes with what I have had to say. Here is an excerpt:
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“It is very possible that they will never learn,” Mr. Trump wrote of Iran’s regime on Saturday night. Or is it U.S. decision makers who never learn? Vice President JD Vance has been touting Iran’s “transformed” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders ready to “turn over a new leaf” with the U.S. He even reached “gentlemen’s agreements” with them outside the memorandum, Mr. Vance assured critics.
Well, these are no gentlemen. It’s the same terrorist regime, and this is the Battle of Hormuz that Mr. Trump thought he had ducked. In case there was any doubt, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Iran is solely responsible for managing the Strait under the memorandum. He said “no other country has any responsibility in that regard.” Mr. Araghchi is Iran’s chief negotiator with Mr. Vance.
It wasn’t enough that Mr. Trump gave Iran an oil sanctions waiver without safeguards, promised billions of dollars in frozen assets and stopped sanctions enforcement. The regime wants to conquer the Strait and turn it into a toll booth, with transit by permission only. On a ship-by-ship basis, Iranian foreign policy would determine who crosses. This is the opposite of free navigation and provides no security for energy flows.
Force is the regime’s means to make the world bend. Without it, shippers refused to heed Iran’s dictates for Hormuz during the deal’s early days. Vessels sailed out via the Strait’s southern, Omani lane. Tehran’s demands that ships transit only through the Iranian lane, request access two days in advance, and sign up for special Iranian “insurance” were ignored. Oil prices fell far faster than most experts expected.
In short, the Strait wasn’t going Iran’s way. It was becoming free again—hence the regime’s resort to force. Iran is intimidating Oman and other Gulf states. It may also offer them a cut of the spoils from a tolled Strait, but that hardly sweetens the foul deal for the rest of the world.
The question is why Iran still gets the cash, selling its oil free of sanctions and repatriating the revenue to fund its Revolutionary Guard. If Mr. Trump isn’t ready to resume the U.S. blockade, he can amend Treasury’s sanctions-relief license to require that all proceeds from Iranian oil sales be placed in escrow….
Read the whole thing here.
