The Times, They are a Changin' ... and Changin' and Changin'...
In fact, it seems Trump's deadlines never stop changing.
President Trump redefined his indefinite ceasefire today to a definite 3-5-day timeframe, if 3-5 days can be called definite. Yesterday the schedule was “until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.” Now it’s 3-5 days.
It happens that 3-5 days is also just the right timeframe for the arrival of the third US aircraft carrier to the gulf region. The USS George HW Bush will be back on the prowl within hunting distance of Iran’s shores by this weekend. So, the now more defined Schmeasefire extension may have just been a tactical retreat to get ready for the next round in the Iran bakeoff … or it may just be enough time for Trump’s indigestion from his last TACOfest to settle down so he can eat more TACO.
Iran stopped two cargo ships from skirting the bend in the Hormuz to escape the gulf today by firing upon them. At the same time, it skirted the US Navy with dozens of oil-laden ships of its own by going dark, turning off their transponders. Apparently that simple trick worked. Most were on their way to market from Iranian ports but a number of the tankers were headed into Iranian ports to reload—all the exact kind Trump said he would completely stop.
Donald Trump’s naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is unraveling after dozens of Iranian vessels secretly slipped past US surveillance, even as the regime tightened its grip on the critical oil passageway by attacking three tankers.
Approximately 34 Iranian oil tankers have slipped through the blockade, with 19 vessels exiting the Persian Gulf past Trump’s navy and another 15 ships entering from the Arabian Sea toward Iran, according to the Financial Times. Six of those tankers were smuggling Iranian crude oil totaling 10.7 million barrels, estimated to be worth approximately $910 million in revenue for the regime….
This all happened despite President Trump declaring the barricade a “tremendous success.” So much winning it is hard for the Prez to announce it all as quickly as it isn’t happening. You have to get the news in before the news comes out that it didn’t, or you’ll never have the chance to brag about it.
Definitive victory hard to find
I noted yesterday there have been no goal successes in Trump’s war with Iran. Objectives in this war have always been as clear as the definitely indefinite deadlines and indefinitely definite extensions of those deadlines. We have more on that in another article today:
An army of yes men, in thrall to Donald Trump’s shifts of temper and short attention span, is hampering any prospect of peace with Iran. And with the president’s indefinite extension of a ceasefire [now more definitely indefinite] being announced on Tuesday, a day after he threatened to resume bombing, the White House’s claims of success are running out of road, insiders say.
In the past 48 hours alone, the US president claimed that a deal was “close”, before then saying it was out of reach. Typifying the confusion, JD Vance, the vice-president, was still at the White House, after Trump said on Sunday that his deputy was heading to Pakistan for talks with Iranian negotiators….
“No one in the administration seems to know what’s going on. What the plans are. What we’re even aiming for now. It’s all just a giant clusterf... and there’s zero accountability, either,” a Trump-world source told The Telegraph.
Even Trump’s closest aides are struggling to keep pace with his updates on Truth Social, which have generated a lot of noise but no discernible diplomatic progress….
Having long passed the “four to six weeks” he said the war would take, the constant mixed messaging and exaggerated claims about a deal point to one reality: there is no clear plan.
What once looked like a calculated campaign to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb has deteriorated into daily updates with no consistency.
Part of the problem may be due to the war’s religious mandates as cast by the prophets of presidential profits:
… Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary … has framed the combat operations as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking religious rhetoric removed from pragmatic tactics or war doctrine.
The president has even claimed that Hegseth does not want the war to end, telling journalists, “Pete didn’t want [the war] to be settled”, and that he was one of the first to throw support behind the initial bombing campaign.
In deed, Pentagon Pete and his Priesthood of Apocalypse have been telling soldiers that the purpose of the war is to bring on Armageddon so Jesus will return sooner. (See “The President’s Prophet and the Pentagon’s High Priest Predict ARMAGEDDON!”)
An objective like that might explain why it is hard for the Trumpkins in the White House to pin a timeframe on the war or its various deadlines because, as people often quote from the prophets, “No man shall know the day nor the hour” of Jesus’ return. There could, therefore, be a number of extensions needed along the way to keep realigning the times of the man in the Pentagon with the time of God.
The president, of course, is a skilled author of chaos.
“His posts are what are causing the chaos,” the diplomat said. “It’s good and bad but the bad has major effects. Behind every single tweet there is a reason for posting, often at the stock market.”
Many of the time changes in this war seem to have aligned much better with the timing of massive bets in the stock market, as has been reported now several times, leading to an investigation on insider trading in the White House. Trump says one thing about a deadline, and stocks trade one way. Then he makes a surprise announcement a day or two later, changing the deadline, and that sends stocks careening in the opposite direction. The one thing that has operated like clockwork is that, each time, about fifteen minutes before Trump posts his major reversal, hundreds of millions of dollars in bets are cast in favor of the market reversing, which it always does. These have been great trades for those with the privilege to make them.
Maybe that is why the war is being fought as it is. It’s great for swinging the market wildly and betting on the swings right before you know the next announcement is coming to make it swing the other way. The people with privilege are making bank on the war.
It’s not been so great for the war:
Behind the presidential podium in Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, Trump addressed the nation and told the US that its military objectives were almost complete and that the war was “very close” to being over.
Yet, 21 days later – and 52 days since the first strikes were launched – the same roadblocks remain.
(More to follow below on the biggest and least-recognized danger for oil in Trump’s on-and-off-again approach.)
On-again/off-again doesn’t work for oil
It may work for an oily president, but shutting down wells and starting them back up again doesn’t work well for oil at all. That means there is one thing here that doesn’t have time to play out, and that is the oil plays of the Persian Gulf:
