Mission Accomplished: Trump Declares Victory as All Sides Intensify Combat
“You never like to say too early you won. We won,” Trump said during a campaign-style rally in Kentucky on March 11.
Knowing that victory was getting harder and harder to claim as Iran’s efforts in the war intensify, Trump quickly rushed to declare victory this week while it looked like there was some slight hope of victory. Iran, then announced, that all oil, except that which it chooses to ship to China or to anyone else where it can pocket the profit, will be refused passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and so oil rose solidly above $100/bbl for Brent crude.
The International Energy’s Agency’s solution was to extend and pretend. While the biggest release of oil from national deserves in history failed to stop prices from rising again, though it may have slowed the rise, it extends the duration of trouble from the embargo:
“The IEA decision also signals how acute the oil shortage risk is, suggesting the IEA does not believe the war is [likely] to end soon, and stock draws now will need to be replaced later, portending higher prices even after the war ends,” Kavonic told CNBC.
This move may somewhat reduce how much oil rises now, but it will spread that cost over months after the embargo ends as the oil gets replaced.
This solution was not much different than when Trump told oil tankers to “show some guts,” and, right after he did, several were bombed by Iran. Lesson learned: Trust this president, and it may cost you your life. He just spouts anything he wants off the top of his head, regardless of how reckless it is to the lives of others. Tanker captains and owners wisely knew he completely unable to prevent the bombing from happening, and Trump surely must have known that when he said that, thinking he could just speak a different reality into being. His word is meaningless … and deadly if followed.
This oil war has now been described as an even greater embargo than the 1970s OPEC Oil Crisis:
The Iran war has triggered an even bigger oil shock than the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.
The Paris-based agency said the conflict in the Middle East had caused the “largest disruption to crude supplies in the history of the global oil market”.
The amount of oil carried by tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged from around 20 million barrels per day (mb/d) to “a trickle”, it said.
By contrast, around four mb/d were removed from global markets by the Arab oil embargo during the Yom Kippur war of 1973….
With “limited capacity” to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf countries have been forced to cut production by at least 10mb/d as storage sites have filled up, the IEA said. By contrast, production was reduced by about five mb/d in 1973.
What does a Trump “victory” look like?
Two oil tankers were struck overnight in the Gulf in a suspected Iranian attack.
Tehran also launched a new wave of attacks against Gulf energy targets on Thursday….
Jim Reid, a Deutsche Bank analyst, wrote: “With each passing day, it gets harder to argue that the disruption to shipping and energy infrastructure will only prove temporary.”
In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump tried to put a positive spin on the higher prices. He wrote: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
So, victory looks like rising prices. Great for American oil producers. Lousy for most of the rest of us; but, hey, the billionaires are making bank. That’s what counts in Trump’s world. This is how we Make America Great Again. We make a lot of money off of our own oil. You can enjoy the benefit at the pump each week.
However, it is not just fuel prices that rise with soaring oil prices that help the Petro-billionaires. The price of everything takes off. Pastics that are in almost everything go up in price. Energy to produce things costs more. Energy to transport them costs more. Energy to light the stores that sell them costs more!
But, hey, at least Chris Wright, Trump’s Energy Secretary, assured us that it is “unlikely” we’ll see oil hit $200/bbl (which would be the highest price in history). So, That’s calming. It may not rip past all historic records.
Of course, this savvy man is also the one who announced earlier this week that the US navy was now escorting tankers through the strait. He deleted the post hours later when the navy said it wasn’t true. You would think the guy with “Energy” in his official title would know something about the most important energy crisis in world history before he opened his mouth so we could watch his lips flap meaninglessly in the wind. We may need those oversized, flapping lips to use them as sails once we run out of bunker fuel. Sails might have to become the new mode of ocean transport—a page from history because that is what victory and a “Great” America look like.
“This is now all about the duration of the conflict and the Trump administration really has an incentive to make it seem like this is short.”
I think for most of us, the one area where the administration is really bombing the most is at selling their story of the war being almost over and victory now ours. We can see from the videos posted below that this is now an all-out oil apocalypse, and I don’t use the word lightly, like none of us have ever seen. Even if Trump got Iran to allow oil tankers through the strait, the devastation to refineries and oil fields and port facilities that has already happened will take years to fully repair, and the onslaught has only intensified. In fact, Iran announced on Thursday it will speed up destruction of oil facilities to make sure America pays for what it has done to Iran. I guess that is why Trump calls it winning, because it assures that some of our billionaires will make more off our oil for a very long time.
Israel announced it is now expanding its attacks as it increased the damage it was doing in Lebanon, and the US is continuing its bombing without any slow-down. So, “Victory!” I hear an echo from the past: “Mission Accomplished.”
In the early morning hours of March 12, the Israeli military announced a “wide-scale wave of strikes on Tehran -- an almost nightly event in recent days.
Trump said US forces had struck Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz amid fears of a sea-mining campaign by Tehran in one of the most economically important waterways in the world.
Of course, he also told us less than three days ago that the US had completely destroyed Iran’s navy. Good thing most of us were smart enough to no longer believe a word that comes out of his loose, flapping lips. It’s all blatant lies all the time.
“We hit 28 mine ships as of this moment,” Trump told reporters, a day after the US military said 16 mine-laying vessels had been destroyed.
That was also after the president said Iran’s navy was no more. After he told global tanker fleets it was safe to get back in the water (so to speak). Just get some guts. After his White House assured the world the navy was escorting tankers. Yet, here we are now hitting 28 Iranian navy “mine ships” in just a recent “moment.”
Point being, if the president knew he was still destroying Iranian mine ships, why did he tell tankers it was safe to sail again? Did he not care if they happened to hit a stray mine, creating a massive oil spill as their crew either sunk or got burned alive?
I’m sure if the president were to order the US Navy to escort ships, Iran would be delighted by the target-rich environment, having so many military ships within closer reach of their limited-distance drones. A heavily smoking US flattop would look nice in their publicity videos (from their point of view), and it looks like they already just got a lucky shot like that through to the USS Lincoln. So let’s hope the navy’s determination to operate at a safe distance by using its superior range abilities prevails over the president’s promises of escorts. One thing I’ve always said when you see police officer/agent/spy in a moving getting the gun knocked out of his/her hands is, “Why do they always stand so close? You don’t have to stand close in a gun fight.” That certainly applies to navy ships where guns have a long reach.
The military understands this logic, so it moved its ships back to have more time to knock down swarms of hundreds of drones attacking one aircraft carrier or to be out of range. The things they shoot don’t need to be that close to be precisely hit. Yet, the president wants them right in the middle of the strait running escorts!
The remarks came after at least six vessels in the strait were damaged in incidents across the Persian Gulf’s key maritime artery, where about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies travel.
Victory for sure!
In Iraqi waters, Iranian explosive-laden boats appear to have attacked two fuel tankers, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member, maritime and port officials said.
More victory!
“We won’t allow even one liter of oil to reach the US, Zionists, and their partners. Any vessel or tanker bound to them will be a legitimate target,” said Iran’s military command spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari on March 11.
Ah, says Trump, “I love the thunder of victory in the morning!” even though much of it is the enemy’s thunder.
However, victory cannot just be the victory of achieving longterm higher prices for US oil producers to amass wealth. It has to also mean regime change, since Trump told us all at the start of this conflict regime change was guaranteed, making that an apparent objective of the war.
First, we saw backpedaling:
Trump sent oil prices soaring last week when he demanded Iran’s ‘unconditional surrender.’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified that this meant ‘Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender whether they say it themselves or not.’
Being in a place where they need to surrender is far from actually surrendering unconditionally. Regardless, they are very far from even being in that place:
Iran’s government is not at risk of collapse and its leadership remains broadly intact after two weeks of relentless US and Israeli bombing, classified [US] intelligence suggests.
A ‘multitude’ of classified reports provide ‘consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger’ of falling and ‘retains control of the Iranian public,’ sources told Reuters, with the latest completed within days.…
The intelligence reporting reveals that Iran’s clerical power structure remains in place after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s killing on February 28, the first day of US-Israeli strikes.
Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first statement on Thursday since taking over as Iran’s supreme leader, warning Trump that US ‘bases will be attacked’ and vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed….
A senior Israeli official acknowledged that there is no certainty the war will lead to the government’s collapse….
The intelligence reporting reveals that Iran’s clerical power structure remains in place after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s killing on February 28, the first day of US-Israeli strikes.
“VICTORY!” babbled the obviously baffled or bloviating President.
Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first statement on Thursday since taking over as Iran’s supreme leader, warning Trump that US ‘bases will be attacked’ and vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.
That certainly sounds like they are “in a place” of unconditional surrender.
So much winning! People are asking him to stop.
‘Iran will not refrain from avenging the blood of its martyrs,’ Mojtaba said in a televised address.
When Trump said in his State of the Union address that “There is just so much winning, people are asking me to stop. Stop winning so much. We can’t handle it,” he must have meant people are asking him to stop winning like this.
No doubt the US military is doing a great job of exacting a heavy toil; but, as I pointed out from the start, we have Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria to remind us of how difficult regime change is, and Iran has always been far more heavily armed than any of those nations.
Way too much winning.
Next, up, Iran declares Amazon, Google, Microsoft and global banks are their new military targets in order to cause the greatest damage to the US economy they can, especially now that the allied forces have essentially used chemical weapons on Tehran by turning its largest refinery into a near-nuclear sized bomb that has ravaged the city of 9,000,000 with black rain and sewers full of oil that are exploding all over the city and clouding it with utterly toxic black air to breathe and highly acidic rain.
(See the videos below to see how severe the chemical damage is.)
(The headlines covering today’s quotes and reports appear in boldface below, along with videos of the devastation happening in Tehran:)
