Trump Says He Owns the Strait. Your Gas Bill Says Otherwise.

Funny how every time some politician stands at a podium and declares total victory, the price of something you actually need goes up.

There was Donald Trump on Monday, sitting in the Oval Office, telling reporters the U.S. Navy has “100%” control of the Strait of Hormuz. “It’s open now,” he said. A “steel wall,” he called our posture. The only one with control. Sounds tremendous. Sounds like mission accomplished, if you remember that phrase and how old it’s gotten.

Meanwhile, Brent crude jumped about 5% to near $88 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate hit $82. Those are the highest levels since late July. So the strait is “open” and “100% controlled,” and oil just got more expensive. Ask yourself who benefits from that math. Because it sure isn’t the guy filling his tank at the Sheetz on Route 30.

White House (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s what actually happened. Iran laid out six conditions Saturday for reopening the strait. Lift the naval blockade. Pull U.S. forces out of the region. Pay war reparations. Release frozen Iranian assets. Stop attacking their allies. The whole list. Tehran’s top security official, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, said the waterway stays shut until Washington meets every one of them.

So what does Trump do? He gets on Truth Social at 2 a.m. or whenever and flips the whole thing. Iran wants reparations? Interesting idea, he says. Now Iran owes US reparations. For roadside bombs. For the USS Cole. For protesters killed over 50 years. For 52,000 people killed in the last five months. He threw everything in there. Every grievance going back decades, dumped into a negotiation about a shipping lane.

Now, I’m not saying those deaths don’t matter. They do. But ask yourself: is that how you close a deal? You’re trying to end a war, and you hand the other side a bill for fifty years of history? That’s not a negotiation. That’s a performance. And the people who pay for the performance are the ones watching pump prices climb while the players congratulate themselves.

NASA (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Trump told Axios, “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” Then he added, “It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game.”

Chess game. Your kids’ college fund is evaporating at the pump and it’s a chess game. The Navy has been blockading Iranian ports since mid-April. That’s four months. The strait carried a fifth of the world’s oil before this mess. A fifth. And the best the experts running this operation can offer is “it always works out.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman called U.S. sanctions a “compulsive addiction.” He’s not wrong, and that should bother you. Washington slaps sanctions on somebody, the situation gets worse, so we slap on more sanctions, and the situation gets worse again, and somehow the answer is always more sanctions. The people running this have one move and they’ve been running it for thirty years.

U.S. Energy Information Administration (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Chuck Schumer called Trump’s handling a “complete and total failure” and said Trump “got us into an illegal war, is losing his illegal war, and has no way out of his illegal war.” Schumer’s right that there’s no exit strategy. He’s wrong that this is just Trump’s war. The whole establishment signed off on this. The Pentagon, the think tanks, the cable news generals who haven’t won a conflict since Grenada but keep getting booked to explain the next one.

Iran is now negotiating with Oman to partially open the strait without fully reopening it. A side deal. A workaround. Something that lets everybody save face while the waterway stays choked and the oil keeps climbing. Funny how these things always end with a quiet arrangement that helps the governments involved and leaves the rest of us paying the difference.

The strait is “open.” The war is “semi-negotiated.” It “always works out.” And your gas is $4.29 a gallon.