The Lid Is Off
Is chaos in the oil market ‘a small price to pay’ or what will end Trump’s war?
After demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” in a belligerent social media post on Friday, amid signs that his incoherent war was set to drag on, Donald Trump himself appeared to once again capitulate to the power of the financial markets and the biggest global energy upheaval for years.
Over the weekend, he had said that rising oil prices were “a small price to pay” for world peace, and that only “fools” would be concerned about them. But as Sky News’s David Blevins put it, the only thing that speaks louder than Trump is the price of a barrel of oil.
On Monday, the president told reporters that the conflict was “very complete” – whatever that means - and nearing an end. The obvious attempt to reassure markets partly worked, but carried no details of exactly how the campaign was “ahead of schedule” or likely to conclude, while still leaving the door open for possible boots on the ground.
Yet none of this should be surprising, given that the administration has so far failed to agree on exactly why the conflict began in the first place.
Heading into a tenth chaotic, billion-dollar day of military operations, that confusion continued. In a typically mixed message, Trump later on Monday told House Republicans “We have already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”
Despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today promising the “most intense day yet” of bombings against Iran, the rational expectation has been that Trump was looking for an off-ramp to allow him to declare victory and go home; shifting seamlessly from “unconditional surrender” to personally deciding when such a surrender might have taken place.
But whatever he might claim at the end of this, could it really be called a “victory”?
It’s hard to assert “regime change” if the regime doesn’t change. And although Tehran’s leadership structure may have been disrupted, as Vali R Nasr writes at The New York Times:
“Iran has been designed to endure, with authority dispersed among many nodes of power and exercised through a web of relations among clerical, military and bureaucratic institutions and power brokers inside and outside the government. The supreme leader is the ultimate arbiter in this system, but the multilayered state can function during a crisis. This resiliency is now the target of U.S. and Israeli bombing campaigns.
“Resistance will not remain limited to Iran’s military force and its core supporters. The United States and Israel have hoped that bombing will pave the way for a popular uprising against the deeply unpopular and weakened regime. They may hope that Mr. Khamenei’s rise will only make that more likely. But the obverse could happen. The fundamental threat posed by this war is not just to the Islamic republic but to the whole country.
“Indeed, many Iranians harbor deep anger toward the Islamic republic. It was, after all, only two months ago that nationwide protests calling for the end of the Islamic republic were brutally suppressed, killing thousands of people.”
There’s also the matter of how seriously - or not - Trump takes reports that Russia has been helping Iran target US assets, as well as controversy around the sinking by a US submarine of an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean, and, of course, the question of responsibility for the tragic bombing of a girls’ school on the first day of hostilities.
Add to that, as Michael Tomasky writes at The New Republic, that the war is “setting a mountain of taxpayer dollars on fire every day – mostly because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Everywhere you look,” Tomasky says, “the news isn’t merely bad. It’s terrible.”
Imperial presidency? More of an indisciplined, irrational presidency. And too many people, including Republicans in Congress, appear to be just fine with that.
And of course as always, there’s money to be made.
Dan Rather and his team write about how, despite the economic impact of the conflict, the Trump Organization hasn’t taken its eye off the moneyball at home.
And then there’s the seemingly-relentless growth of the prediction markets, albeit with something of a bump in the road during the whole messy regime change thing. But at least Polymarket pulled down its market “that allowed users to trade on where a nuclear weapon would detonate by March 31, June 30, or simply before 2027.”
Ana Marie Cox at The New Republic writes how prediction markets “are eroding our soul” by “turning war into another racket.”
“At least a roulette wheel is equitably governed by chance. These markets are easily gamed by exactly the kind of ethically bankrupt monsters attached to the Trump administration who would have foreknowledge of the strike—or those fortunate to overhear the matter being discussed over drinks. (If you are already OK with civilian casualties, profiting directly on them is just a short hop further away from humanity.) Sure enough, the market-tracking company Bubblemaps announced on Sunday that six crypto wallets established within 24 hours of the strikes had won $1.2 million buying contracts on it.
“We’re in a boom market for Armageddon arbitrage: Earlier this year, two Israel Defense Forces reservists were arrested for using confidential information to place bets on unspecified Israeli military operations.”
You know, maybe that is how it all ends. With Trump allies like Lindsey Graham happy to go on TV and talk about the war being the “best money ever spent” (apart of course from whatever Trump’s granddaughter spent at Erewhon) while Pete Hegseth perhaps inevitably became embroiled in claims that troops were told their mission was to bring about Armageddon.
In a profile of Hegseth for The Guardian, David Smith writes:
“Photos have shown him bearing two tattoos associated with crusader imagery. One depicts the Jerusalem cross – a cluster of five crosses long connected to medieval crusader iconography – on his chest.
“Nearby is an image of a sword accompanied by the Latin phrase “Deus vult”, meaning “God wills it”, a slogan historically linked to the crusades and revived in recent years by various far-right groups. It appeared on clothing and flags carried by some participants in the January 6 Capitol attack.
“Nor are the references merely symbolic. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, Hegseth wrote that those who benefit from “western civilisation” should “thank a crusader”.
Jeffrey Goldberg writes at The Atlantic on how, almost a year after Signalgate, no-one involved, including Hegseth, has faced any consequences.
But I guess at least our taxpayer dollars are helping Benjamin Netanyahu achieve his life’s goal.
Steve Hendrix and John Hudson write at The Washington Post that the war is both Trump and Netanyahu’s biggest gamble yet.
“For Netanyahu, the risk is that Trump’s involvement won’t be enough to reverse his anemic electoral hopes. The prime minister — who will face traumatized Israeli voters this year while still trying to escape accountability for the catastrophic security failures of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack — is betting the war will prove to be the latest lifeline in a political career defined by magic-trick comebacks…
“For Trump, with congressional midterms on the horizon, the war strains a political base built on hostility to foreign entanglements, and it comes with gas prices already climbing. Many in his camp fault the president for letting Netanyahu drag him into what Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcast host and commentator, called “Israel’s war.”
Sadly, right now there’s precious little indication of what comes next or how this all might resolve. But it’s a fair bet that the ultimate losers will be the ordinary Iranian people.
Nasrin Parvaz writes at The Guardian that “Calls for a popular uprising and empty promises of help are reckless in the extreme – and no answer to my country’s plight.”
“Let us be clear: when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu conspired to launch their war, it was not out of a desire to free the Iranian people from the tyranny of the regime.”
See Also:
The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’
‘Everlasting Consequences’ (From June)
Of Bombs And F-Bombs (From June)
Obviously Trump’s ‘war’ against Iran will remain a developing story for a while – follow latest updates via The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, NBC News, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera and The Atlantic.
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As always, thanks for reading. When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for “normality”.
As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.
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