Trump only has one option now

The president is out of control. The Iranians have the advantage. The Israelis are unleashed. Allies are outraged and alienated. The most Donald Trump can do right now is lie with everything he's got in the hopes that markets believe him and keep the price of oil down.

That appears to be the entire point of last night’s “update” – to quell any nascent feelings of panic. In the days leading up to the primetime address, he hinted hard that the end was coming. Indeed, at 3:28 pm eastern time, Politico ran this credulous but reassuring headline: “‘I came, I saw, I conquered’: Trump set to claim victory in Iran at primetime address.”

Then he didn’t. The war, he said, is “nearing completion” and would take another “two to three weeks.” In response this morning, stocks fell and oil prices soared, reaching $110 per barrel, on Trump’s vow “to escalate attacks on Iran,” in the words of the Associated Press.

By now, it should be a familiar pattern. Trump has been saying the war is winding down virtually since the beginning of it. He knows markets want it to. He knows that if he doesn’t end it soon, gas prices will keep rocketing. He knows rocketing gas prices will vaporize whatever advantage his party has in the run-up to this year’s congressional elections. He knows that if the Democrats take the House, he faces a world of endless, grinding exposure.

At the same time, Trump can’t end it. Israel is neither going to stop its imperialist agenda (it invaded southern Lebanon) nor is it going to stop attacking Iran for the purpose of killing its leadership. US allies in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, where Trump is heavily invested, want the war to continue. They prefer a US ground invasion to overthrow the regime.

Iran’s regime is also not going to stop. It will continue to choke off the supply of oil at the Strait of Hormuz to hurt Trump while boosting sales of its own oil to China. It has established a tribute system in which “friendly” countries can pay a toll or suffer the consequences. Tolling offers an incentive for insurers. They would rather see a $100 million tanker carrying $200 million in oil pay a 1 percent tax than see it sinking to the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Even if the president were not a colossal moron surrounded by yes-men, he’d still be stuck. (If none of those things were true, he would not have gone to war.) The best thing he can do is kick the can down the road, which is to say, lie: extend the time frame by another two weeks, continuously imply that the war is ending, that Iran is defeated, that NATO is ungrateful, and so on, in a desperate hope that everyone will buy the “reality” he’s selling.

But Trump knows everyone won’t buy it. On Wednesday, Politico reported that the current price of oil (about $100 per barrel) is “a baseline” for the White House. They expect it to keep going up. Politico said they are not “ruling out the possibility of prices rising as high as $200 per barrel.” That would put the national average price of gas at around $8 (or diesel at $12).

Paul Krugman reminded us that gas prices are only half the story. The effect of the Strait of Hormuz under lockdown will be felt in the price of “diesel, jet fuel, fertilizer and plastics.” Who pays the cost? Producers at first, but it will “quickly be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for shipping and, indirectly, almost everything you buy,” Krugman said.

What would the world look like with $200 a barrel? asked journalist Jesus Servulo Gonzalez. In that hypothetical scenario, he said, “the economy would enter a recession, triggering an inflationary crisis that would severely impact citizens’ finances and businesses’ bottom lines.

"The world would become poorer and economic activity would grind to a halt.”

Trump made an appeal last night. He said the war is part of a “future investment in your children’s and grandchildren’s future.” In his incoherent way, the president was offering a kind of bargain – a little personal economic security in exchange for national security.

That, however, flies in the face of the existing deal, which was trading democracy and the institutions of democracy in exchange for economic security. On MS Now this morning, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that many people in the last election chose to swap their “discomfort in what he does to our national institutions for a better economy.

“A majority, or overwhelming majority, of Americans do not like the way he conducts himself in office,” he said. “They do not like what he’s done to our institutions, but they were willing to make a trade for their family’s economic security. When they’re not getting that, they’re gonna abandon ship and that’s what you see them doing in the poll numbers right now.”

A new CNN poll found that just 27 percent approve of Trump’s handling of inflation.

Donald Trump was never going to live up to his end of the bargain with the American people, just as he was never going to live up to the promises made by previous presidents to maintain order in the Middle East to ensure safe passage of the world’s supply of oil.

So far, the lies have been working. Markets have shown a stunning willingness to believe him when he says the end of the war is around the corner. But the lies may soon stop working.

While the average price of gas is currently $4.07, Gasbuddy’s Patrick De Haan told Reuters the pain will get worse soon. “US average retail gasoline prices are now set to climb to between $4.25 and $4.45 a gallon by next week after crossing $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022,” Reuters said. "If there is no viable plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US average price of gasoline ⁠will likely cross $5 a gallon and hit record levels within a month.”

There is no plan, of course – not one that will actually reopen the strait and restore order. It's too late for that. All Iran has to do to spook insurers is sink one tanker a month and it can do that even if the president were to order ground forces to occupy key portions of that strait.

But the built-in failure of an invasion wouldn't be apparent for a long. Meanwhile, Trump could use the fog of war, especially troop casualties, as cover for stringing along markets, giving investors just enough hope to keep oil prices down until it becomes obvious to everyone that the mission could not from the start accomplish what Trump said it would.

But by then, Trump will have moved on to the next lie.

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