Who Won: Trump or Iran? See video for the answer
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* Most commentators either have an agenda or simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Some, like John Bolton and other war mongers, want total war and the annihilation of Iran. Others claimed President Trump was weak. In fact, President Trump has been anything but weak.
* Let me make one correction. The accurate name, in my view, is the Khalid Strait, not the Strait of Hormuz. Khalid ibn al-Walid was the Islamic general who defeated and killed Hormuz. This is an Arab region, and what is commonly called the Persian Gulf is surrounded mostly by Arab countries. That is why I call it the Khalid Strait and refuse to use what I see as an Iranian nationalist name that only fuels Tehran’s ego.
* The American blockade on the Khalid Strait is costing Iran more than $1 billion every single day. That includes more than $300 million in lost oil and gas sales every day, in addition to the accumulated economic damage caused by the blockade, which goes far beyond $1 billion a day. This is a country where GDP per capita is, at best, around $4,500 a year, yet the prices of basic food items are skyrocketing beyond what you would pay at your local Target or Walmart.
* An egg that used to cost around 70 cents now costs far more in a country where people earn, at best, around $600 a month. Ordinary Iranians cannot find basic food items. For the first time since the creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iran could not pay their full salaries. Instead, it paid only a percentage of those salaries. Iran is losing money. Iran is bleeding to death.
* The way oil wells produce is very simple to understand. Imagine opening a can of Coca-Cola—you cannot simply close it again and expect it to be the same. Or imagine trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. Oil wells have to keep producing. If you shut production down for months, and sometimes even for weeks, the damage can become irreparable. The infrastructure has to be rebuilt, and even then, production never returns to 100 percent. Iran’s oil industry is suffering enormous structural damage. The average maintenance bill alone is running at well over half a billion dollars every single week. Iran is bleeding, and it is in very bad shape.
* Meanwhile, President Trump simply has to negotiate. What if he negotiates for another year? What if he negotiates for another six months? Could Iran still finance terrorist attacks across Europe the way it used to? Could it still organize and finance attacks against Israel the way it used to? Could it continue funding regimes and allies aligned with Tehran the way it once did? The answer is increasingly no. Iran is in an incredibly bad position, and all of this is happening without costing American taxpayers another endless war.
* Every smart bomb dropped from an F-16 costs around $1 million, sometimes just to destroy one building or eliminate one individual. President Trump is not doing that. He is a businessman. He understands the value of every American dollar and the value of every American life. He is not interested in repeating the mistakes of Iraq.
* Whenever Iran walks away from negotiations or tries to impose conditions, Israel responds aggressively. The best example was when Iran insisted there could be no ceasefire unless Hezbollah in Lebanon was included. The moment it made that demand, Israel immediately intensified its campaign against Hezbollah.
* Hezbollah is in terrible shape. It has lost many of its senior military commanders. It has lost much of its grip over Lebanon. It no longer has access to one of its main sources of income. What many people don’t realize is that Hezbollah has long relied on drug trafficking. Cocaine laboratories, drug farms, cannabis plantations, methamphetamine production facilities, and trafficking routes serving Europe and parts of the Middle East have all been heavily targeted. Hezbollah has always operated as much like a cartel as a militia
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