The Empire Blinked at Hormuz
The US just signed 14 points admitting it can't win. Netanyahu dragged Trump into the war. Iran called a bluff Washington never thought it would dare. And working people get the bill.
This week the United States signed a document it spent decades swearing it never would.
14 points. A memorandum of understanding with Iran, signed digitally by both presidents, with a formal ceremony set for June 19 in Switzerland for the cameras.
Look at what’s actually in it. Point 2 says both sides will respect each other’s sovereignty and stay out of each other’s internal affairs. That’s coming from the country that has spent 70 years toppling other people’s governments and was dropping bombs on Iran a few weeks ago. Point 4: the US lifts its blockade. Point 7: Washington works to drop all the sanctions. Point 14: the final deal only counts once the UN Security Council backs it, which means China and Russia have to sign off, because nobody in Tehran trusts an American signature on its own anymore.
And they’re right not to trust it. Right after signing, Trump told reporters that if he doesn’t like how Iran behaves, the bombs start dropping on their heads again. That is the man’s idea of peace.
That’s not what a winner signs. That’s what you sign when you’ve lost and you’re too proud to say it out loud.
Here’s how it happened. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Oil shot up. And the most powerful military on earth, the one that ran out of Kabul and ran out of Baghdad, suddenly couldn’t run anywhere. About 1/3 of the world’s oil moves through that strait, and Washington couldn’t be the one who shut off the world’s gas.
Now ask how the war started in the first place.
It started with one man’s election. The Israeli Knesset dissolved on May 20. Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted, cornered, and needs to look like Mr. Security before voters go to the polls by October. So he needed a war, and he sold one to Trump.
Think about that. The author of The Art of the Deal, the guy who never shuts up about how good he is at negotiating, got played by a foreign prime minister who grew up in Philadelphia and speaks better English than half of Trump’s cabinet. The B-2s flew. The big knockout blow landed somewhere in the dirt, and to this day nobody can tell you what actually happened to Iran’s buried nuclear material.
Then both of them turned on each other. Trump started cursing Netanyahu out in private and threatening to cut the aid that covers 15% of Israel’s military budget in normal times and 70% in wartime.
Two rich men sent other people’s kids to die so one of them could win an election in September.
There’s a second lesson here, and it’s bigger than Iran.
Washington didn’t think a closed strait could hurt it. Trump said so out loud. America imports almost no oil through Hormuz, he told the world, we don’t need it. That was the bet. Then Iran shut the strait, oil blew past $120 a barrel, and the man who said he didn’t need it spent the next weeks making its reopening his number one demand, ahead of the nuclear program that was supposedly the whole point of the war. He called Iran’s card a bluff. It wasn’t.
It’s the same arrogance they brought to the trade war. The tariffs were supposed to bring China to its knees. Then Beijing stopped selling rare earths, the metals American factories and weapons can’t run without, and the guys who were going to win the trade war quietly folded. Two different countries, two different cards, same blind spot. China processes the rare earths. Iran sits on Hormuz. Both times Washington treated the other side’s strongest move as a bluff it could absorb. Both times it was wrong.
That kind of confidence isn’t strength. It’s just not bothering to count.
And working people still pay, just watch how. Point 6 of the deal calls for at least $300 billion to rebuild Iran. Washington is already telling reporters the US won’t put in a dime, that it’s really about letting the Gulf monarchies and private investors move in once Iran behaves. So think about what that actually is. Nobody fronts $300 billion out of kindness, least of all the Gulf states that spent decades calling Iran the enemy. Money like that comes with hooks. The contracts to rebuild Iran’s power plants and ports go to their own firms and to Western capital, the cash circles back to the people who put it in, and whoever pays to rebuild a country gets a grip on it. That isn’t reconstruction. It’s a takeover with a nicer name, and Washington plays dealer, deciding who gets let in. America didn’t fire the shells for charity, and the Gulf won’t write the checks for charity either. The bill working people actually pay landed the moment Hormuz closed, at the gas pump here and in the European flights canceled for lack of jet fuel. The ruling class plays the game. Working people get the bill.
So take one last look at what gets signed on June 19.
A promise not to mess with another country’s affairs, from a country that does nothing but mess with other countries’ affairs. A final deal handed to the UN to enforce, because America’s own word isn’t worth anything anymore and Iran wants its rivals in the room as witnesses.
That’s not a peace treaty.
There’s a word for an empire that has to get its rivals to co-sign before anyone will believe it.
Spent.
Good post. Thank you!