More Sunday Male Beauty

 

The Ticking Clock on the Strait of Hormuz

Another day and the Felon continues to twist on the rope of his own creation as oil prices remain around $100/barrel and oil stockpiles around the world dwindle, Russian oil exports are down as Ukraine continues to hit Russia' oil infrastructure, and the specter of the Red Sea route for Saudi oil exports  being closed continues.  Driving around yesterday, literally every gas station As a piece in The Atlantic lays out, the Felon and his sycophants have few options options, none of which are good: (i) escalate with ground troops, something that would be immensely unpopular on the home front, (ii) continue the status quo ongoing military action with oil and gasoline prices increasing further as stockpiles are fully depleted and causing economic disruptions and even higher gas prices in the USA, or (iii) walk away and concede defeat.  As noted numerous times on this blog, the current quagmire could have been avoided had the Felon listened to experienced intelligence personnel and military commanders rather than the assurances of Netanyahu - which Marco Rubio reportedly described as "bullshit."  A piece in the New York Times describes the Felon's situation this way: "Having entered the conflict with little strategy for victory, he now is struggling for a face-saving way to exit."  Here are excerpts from the piece in The Atlantic:

Back in June, at the closing press conference for the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, [the Felon] Donald Trump explained why he had called a halt to hostilities with Iran. Continued bombing would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and as long as the war went on, commercial ships would stay away while emergency oil supplies dwindled.

“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” he warned, conjuring up images of shortages, bedlam, surging prices, and a market collapse on the scale of 1929. Trump told the press that he had studied presidents, and “the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover.”

Fast-forward to late July. The United States has bombed Iran for nearly two weeks, hitting coastal-surveillance sites and weapons-storage facilities as well as bridges, tunnels, rail lines, airports, and electrical infrastructure. Iran has answered with missiles and drones aimed at American bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar, as well as strikes on oil installations and a desalination plant, and repeated attacks on commercial shipping in and around the strait.

Trump resumed the war despite having already explained why military force could not achieve its most pressing objective. He has not resolved this tension. It may be irresoluble. In the meantime, he is betting that Tehran will buckle before economic pressure forces him to do the same.

To understand where we are, consider how the cease-fire collapsed. Each party believed that it had won the war and that the other should accede to its interpretation of the agreement on the strait. . . . . Tehran read it as permission to manage and control access through the waterway. Consequently, Iran sought to funnel ships through corridors it approved, and attacked or threatened vessels that used other routes.

In doing so, Tehran made a serious error in judgment. If it had laid low, it could have reaped the benefits of economic concessions for 60 days and then gradually introduced a toll. Instead, Trump felt compelled to respond, and the agreement broke down. Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser for energy and investment under President Biden, told me that Iran had thought it could boil the proverbial American frog, but it turned the temperature up too high too fast, and the frog got angry.

If Trump continues with limited strikes, he will face the very problems that he laid out in France last month. Hochstein posted on X that the current escalation in the Strait of Hormuz could be more economically dangerous than the previous one, because Russia, the U.S., and China can no longer buffer world markets as they did: Russia has reduced its diesel exports, U.S. crude and strategic reserves are unusually low, and China is cutting its oil consumption less deeply than before. In his view, markets are already signaling the inflationary risk, leaving Trump with a narrowing window to make a deal before another disruption produces a sharper fuel-price and financial shock, possibly as soon as mid- to late September.

Iran seems to want to keep the conflict at a simmer. It is striking back against the United States but has avoided direct attacks that would bring Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Israel fully into the war, even as it applies pressure indirectly, most dramatically through the Houthis’ campaign against Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. Reuters reported that Iran had previously asked the Houthis to prepare to close the Red Sea route if the United States struck Iranian power infrastructure.

Washington is trying to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, offer new economic and technological commitments to Gulf states, protect two maritime choke points, and fight an open-ended air war, all while the energy reserves and political patience needed to sustain those projects are running down.

Trump may inflict more pain on Iran, but this is unlikely to compel Tehran to abandon its attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps Iran will agree to put its ambitions on hold for 60 days in the hope that the previous agreement can be revived. But if the two sides remain gridlocked, Trump will have to decide whether to pay the economic price for continuing a low-intensity war indefinitely; escalate, with all of the risks that entails; or walk away.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Saturday Male Beauty - Pt 2

 

The Dead End to Trump’s "Perfect" War

Before launching his war of choice against Iran, the Felon ignored the warnings of experienced intelligence and military personnel who predicted that Iran would seize control of the Strait of Hormuz and that an air war alone would be insufficient to force Iran into capitulation. Now, five months into the Felon's disastrous war from which there appears to be no exit without an admission of defeat it becomes clear why previous - and smarter - presidents never launched a war with Iran realizing that such a war would turn into a quagmire such as he one we are now witnessing. Should Iran's allies, the Houthis in Yemen, manage to block Saudi tankers from exiting the Red Sea, oil and gas prices could soar and make the high price at the pumps earlier this year look like a bargain - all as the mid-term elections inch closer.  The perverse side of me would love to see American gas prices hit record highs to further erode the Felon's and GOP's support within the MAGA base who foolishly believed the Felon's lies during the 2024 campaign, particularly that the Felon would lower prices and not drag America into more foreign wars.  A column in the New York Times looks at how the Felon's "perfect" war has spun into a disaster. Here are highlights:

“We won,” President Trump announced on March 11, less than two weeks into his Iran war. “In the first hour, it was over.”  On March 24, in the Oval Office, he reiterated, “This war has been won.” On April 6, he asserted, “They are militarily defeated.” On April 11, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The United States has completely destroyed Iran’s Military.” “The war in Iran is going along swimmingly,” Trump said on April 16. “It’s perfect.”

The perfection of Trump’s war has confused some of his supporters. “I don’t understand how it’s possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S. military bases,” Maria Bartiromo of Fox News said on air recently. “Because the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, and the president continues to reiterate that.”

Yet Trump’s perfect war seems to have a few wee flaws, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and, in the past few days, the partial closure of passage through the Red Sea as well. So Trump is escalating attacks in what looks like a doubling down on a failed strategy. But the problem now is not Trump’s terrible miscalculation in starting the war on Feb. 28 in ways that weakened America, depleted munition supplies, reduced our capacity to deter China in Asia and strengthened Iranian hard-liners. Rather, the issue at the moment is the way he is disastrously escalating the war.

Trump has lately been striking sites across Iran each day, and he warned that the United States would hit a power plant or bridge for each ship that Iran struck. Putting aside the question of war crimes, there’s also the problem that Iran responds in kind.

“Iran still retains multiple escalation options,” noted Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israel Defense Intelligence expert on Iran. Citrinowicz noted that Iran could attack Persian Gulf states, cut undersea cables or harness the Houthis in Yemen to attack shipping in the Red Sea.

Both sides have already struck water and desalination plants, which could be disastrous for Gulf countries if this continues. Iran is not heavily dependent on desalination, but Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rely on desalination for almost all of their drinking water. Cities could become pretty much uninhabitable if power plants and desalination plants are destroyed.

Likewise, if the United States attacks Iranian oil and gas sites, Iran is likely to do the same in Gulf countries, reducing oil flows for months or years. The Houthis have announced that they have joined the conflict, targeting Saudi maritime traffic in the Red Sea and thus diminishing global oil supplies even more. The Houthis had stayed out of the war until now, and I wonder if this means they see Iran as the effective victor.

Trump is threatening to strike the Houthis. But he should remember that he and Joe Biden before him spent some $7 billion bombing the Houthis for a bit more than two years and achieved nothing obvious.

“Any realistic strategy should begin with one core assumption: Iran is unlikely to capitulate,” Citrinowicz said.

In other words, increased airstrikes seem a fiery dead end. I hope Trump isn’t considering invading with ground troops, for that would be even more disastrous. Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired general, estimates that it would take a year and 600,000 American troops to subdue Iran, taking casualties along the way.

“Then what?” McCaffrey asked. “Stay?”

[T]here’s really no alternative but negotiation, recognizing that any negotiated outcome will be unpalatable — though not as unpalatable as escalating a war to nowhere. Perhaps the most important aim of negotiation should be keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but Trump’s foolish new nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, if it goes forward, will make that even harder. If the Saudis are enriching nuclear fuel, the Iranians will insist on doing so as well, and the upshot may be a nuclear competition between them.

I’m increasingly fearful that the most dismal legacy of this catastrophic war may be that a decade or two from now both Saudi Arabia and Iran will have nuclear weapons. Two unstable, misogynist Middle Eastern autocracies with nuclear weapons — what could go wrong?

More Saturday Male Beauty

 

Poll Shows Trump Voters Losing Patience with Iran War

I often wondered what it would take to cause at least some among the Felon's MAGA base to put down their pitchers of Kool-Aid and reconnect, at least somewhat, with objective reality.  The Felon has been a master at spewing lies and disinformation that his base time and time again clink to as gospel.  Yet, a new poll suggests that the Iran war, higher gasoline prices - oil is back over $100/barrel - and an incompetent handling of the economy may be finally outweighing the appeal of the Felon's efforts to mainstream racism and white supremacy, cruelty to non-whites, and mainstream anti-LGBT bigotry (at last nights White House Correspondents dinner he spewed anti-gay and anti-trans insults) that have to date appealed to the MAGA base.  If the Felon's newly announced  tariffs push consumer prices even higher before the 2026 mid-term elections one can only hope that defections from the MAGA alternate universe may pick up and, with luck, see Republicans harshly punished for what they and the Felon have wrought. Meanwhile, the Felon - self absorbed as ever and busy grifting and further enriching himself - seems to care little about the grow opposition to the war, including among his typically mindless base.  A piece at Politico looks at this development:

Half of President Donald Trump’s MAGA base thought the Iran war was worth its economic costs in May. Now, just a little more than a third do.

That precipitous, 13-point drop in just two months, according to a new POLITICO Poll, reveals how the [Felon's] president’s most die-hard supporters are starting to agree with the majority of Americans who have long opposed the U.S.’ involvement in the war.

Additionally, 37 percent of self-identified MAGA Trump voters say the U.S. should continue its involvement only if it doesn’t increase costs, up from 29 percent who said the same in May, according to the survey, conducted by independent polling firm Public First. Nearly 1 in 5 MAGA voters believe that the U.S. should end its war in Iran, regardless of the costs.

That flagging support among the president’s most loyal supporters is the clearest sign that Americans’ patience is wearing thin as the economy continues to dominate as voters’ top concern heading into a critical midterm cycle.

But Trump on Monday gave little indication that he was looking for a quick end to the war. The U.S. military has pounded Iran for the last two weeks, and speaking to reporters on Tuesday the president claimed that Iranian officials “want to desperately meet” . . . .

The White House is “at a maximum level of frustration right now, and I was told by very senior people that the president is now fully aware that the only way to the victory that he wants is completely politically impossible. The American people just will not support the kind of escalation it would take at this point,” said one person close to the White House, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “We’ve got more dead Americans and a politically impossible situation.”

This souring of the president’s base comes amid renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, which have been conducting tit-for-tat strikes after the president earlier this month declared a tentative peace agreement between the two countries “over.” Two U.S. servicemembers were killed in Jordan this weekend and gas prices have climbed above $4 per gallon, underscoring the war’s impact at home.

The mood among White House staff and their outside allies is grim as the president grapples with finding a path out of an unpopular and expensive war three months from a midterm election expected to turn on cost of living issues.

The president was expected to spend the year on a victory tour on affordability issues, touting his popular tax cuts, Trump accounts for newborns and lower drug prices. Instead, a domestic travel schedule has been pocked by visits to Dover Air Force Base to oversee the dignified transfer of the remains of more than a dozen dead soldiers, and he has during his campaign-style rallies been forced to time and again argue to the American people that the price of war — most salient to higher prices at the pump — was worth ending Iran’s nuclear program.

White House aides contend that price bumps are temporary and will quickly return to pre-war levels either when the war ends or when the U.S. has degraded Iran’s military capabilities to the point that it can no longer stem the flow of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. . . . . “The President does not make national security decisions based on fluid opinion polls, but on the best interests of the American people.”

Still, the latest polling shows that non-MAGA Trump voters are even more down on the war, with only 21 percent believing it is worth higher costs, while 28 percent say that the U.S. shouldn’t continue the war regardless of costs.

And the results show the president’s voters are broadly comfortable blaming the war for higher prices. When asked why gas prices have increased since the president took office, the majority of respondents blamed the conflict, including 57 percent of MAGA voters and 63 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters.

Those who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, also blamed the president’s poor handling of the economy and his tariffs, at 55 percent and 52 percent, respectively, for the rise in costs.

Trump’s 2024 supporters also are split on whether gas prices would have gone up more, less or the same under a Democratic president compared with now — another indication that Americans are more willing to assign blame to Trump for the state of the economy.

Prominent Republicans, including strategists in key races, have spent the last several months warning about the impact of backlash to the Iran war on their chances of holding the House and the Senate, with frustrations around the war playing out in competitive races across the country.

“This shows that as unpopular as the first round of war was from February to early summer, this second round is even more ridiculous,” said Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine. “The American people quite simply do not get it, do not understand why we are in this war, and, yes, President Trump is king of the Republican Party. Yes, the president can do a lot and has a lot of latitude with his own supporters, but kings are not invulnerable from political reality.” But Trump on Tuesday said he wasn’t concerned.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Thursday Male Beauty