Although possessing the strongest navy in the world, America dares not send its fleets into the narrow seas around the Straits of Hormuz that sees 20% of world oil exports.  In the absence of US military dominance of the area, Iran controls the flow of ships through it with cheap air and sea drones and there’s nothing Trump can do about it.  Iran’s illogical intransigence in the face of dire threats to remove their civilization from future history books and America’s impotence is driving Trump mad in all senses of the word as witnessed by his expletive filled Truth Social rant on 5 April, 48 hours before his final deadline.

One of the keys to Trump’s success (in America) is that he owns the news cycle.  He probably devotes a half of his waking hours to communicating via Truth Social rants, televised White House meetings and Dear Leader Cabinet praise sessions, TV show phone-ins, quick pressers in the presidential jet or even on the way to his helicopter that takes him to the jet.  Between that, plotting against his enemies and his continual golf playing (one day in four) one wonders where he finds the time to get properly briefed on National and International issues and to formulate coherent policies.  This need to fill the air with so many words means that many times he contradicts even what he said earlier that very day.

Putting aside the messy details of the armed conflict with Iran, two high level concepts have eluded the deluded American planners.  Firstly, is it a war, operation, conflict, operation, excursion or even ‘just a little journey into Iran’?  Secondly, and more importantly what are the strategic objectives and possible consequences.  The initial casus belli according to the Trump administration was that Iran was on the cusp of visiting nuclear holocaust on their enemies.  When that didn’t wash there were mutters from Trump about the Iranians being nasty people.  Then, after initially denying that regime change was an objective, these words have gained currency more recently.

The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth with his pomaded hair, proclaimed a few days ago that the regime has changed.  Sure they permanently deposed the Ayatollah against his will, but his son, who is apparently more hardline, was voted to be the new Ayatollah without all the conclave rigmarole that the Catholics go through.  That he is supposedly more hardline could be moot as he is presently being kept on life support.  However, the people that act in his name are definitely hardline and will probably keep him as an inspiration for their jihad and the only unconscious head of state.

PIC

Back in the US of A, even the MAGAlytes have wearied of Trump’s incessant bombast and his erratic and contradictory statements.  The Epstein fallout continues and many think Trump sought the war as a distraction.  However, the war brought into sharp focus Trump’s lack of strategic planning and the consequences of the ill-conceived war for the world economy which America is inextricably part of whether it likes it or not.  He looks every one of his 79 years.  He is exhausted, doesn’t have a clue how to extricate America from the stalemate and resorts to his overused hoary chestnuts of Biden, fake news, hoaxes, conspiracies, Obama etc to deflect.  The mutters from his voter base are becoming more strident while he attacks and insults friend and foe alike in his midnight rants on Truth Social.  He has even resorted to swearing and people are increasingly talking about his cognitive decline. 

Experts observing his interactions and outbursts say that it’s probably frontotemporal dementia which exhibits as changes in social inhibition, empathy, and executive function – his own personal form of Trump Derangement Syndrome which he accuses his critics of. 

Talk of using the 25^th Amendment – the process to impeach the President – is slowly becoming more mainstream.  In fact, the loyal but stupid Majorie Taylor Greene, who was a resolute Trump supporter and voted three times for him, demanded on 7 April that Congress invokes the 25^th Amendment. 

In delicious irony, it’s looking increasingly possible that Trump might end up being the subject of regime change himself.

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In the first few months of his chaotic Presidency, Trump made incessant and outrageous demands on the world, be they tariffs or Canada and Greenland becoming states of America.  Invariably he would back down when the blowback became hard to ignore.  This led a journalist at the Financial Times to coin the phrase, TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out.

In June 2025, Trump obliterated, or so he said, Iran’s underground nuclear facilities with bunker busting bombs.  The response was a short series of long-range missile attacks on Israel that soon petered out.  Apparently, they weren’t obliterated as the Trump administration started ramping up the rhetoric in February with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff stating that Iran was roughly a week away from producing industrial-grade, weaponizable uranium.  Enter the Israelis who had intelligence as to where the Ayatollah would be on 28 February and Trump decided to join in the fun and games with Operation Epic Fail.

This time Iran’s response was not overwhelming but a measured one designed to cause all Trump’s Arab allies in the Middle East maximum pain.  The small but carefully directed drones and missiles closed the Straits of Hormuz, shut down all the economic engines of the Middle East: airlines, tourism, export processing zones, refineries, oil and gas exports along with causing expensive damage to USA’s military – an AWACS aircraft worth $1bn, 2 KC-135 air refuelling tankers, 2 large long-range radars in Saudi Arabia worth probably $500m, a F35 Stealth aircraft and a F15E Eagle fighter bomber amongst others.  Over and above the losses, the operational costs are running at $1bn per day!

Trump hasn’t got a long attention span at the best of times and the war is now into its 36^th day with no end in sight.  Assassinating the Ayatollah changed Iran’s response compared to their previous reactions.  It is now a radical religious imperative to continue until America is humiliated if not beaten.  Having started the war without consulting his allies and having repeatedly dissed them for not joining in, he seems to have lost all interest and is prepared to wash his hands of the whole hot mess that he created all on his own even if America has to go into recession along with the whole world.  Never before has he confronted such an obdurate opponent who does not respond to conventional threats and inducements.  He has no solution – no one wants to help him out of the hole he dug for America.  If he was a participant on his own TV show, The Apprentice, he would have been fired. 

Although Trump managed to escape the consequences of the Robert Mueller Report in 2016 on Russian interference in the Presidential elections, he is going to struggle to escape the consequences of the 2026 Mullah Report which reads – FAIL!  With luck, the toothless TACO is toast.

Just about everything Trump has tried has turned to guano.  Apart from The Apprentice, most of his dealings have lost people a lot of money.  We’re talking about six casino bankruptcies and failed ventures like Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks and Trump University where students received two pieces of paper – a worthless degree certificate and a huge bill.  What about his wives – two failed marriages and, the third, a Barron and Stormy one, where every day Melania wakes up and quietly recites her little survival mantra, “Let me count the days, …”

He would be out of his depth in a fish tank let alone in the complex world of international economics and socio/geopolitics where he has now found himself.  Previously, he had negotiated with bankers and fund managers who were on an endless treadmill to make deals in order for their companies to survive.  They were putty in his grubby showman’s hands as their greed blinded their objectivity.  

On the other hand, international leaders are driven by a complex interaction of things, are answerable to millions and cannot be easily blackmailed or conned.  A good example is the patient James Carney from Canada who has consistently outplayed him.  Now with Iran, he is facing a country controlled by religious zealots who embrace glorious death in the name of their faith.

Just like the five stages of grief, Trump is going through the same the five stages in his (hopefully) brief war.

Denial:  Copying Putin’s ‘Special Operation’ against Ukraine in 2020, which he refused to call an invasion, Trump and his dingleberries have refused to call their military action a war for four weeks even though it has cost $1bn each and every day!  They have called it every other name and even contradicted each other in their attempts to avoid using the term.  Trump even used the extreme euphemism of calling it an ‘excursion’!

Anger:  Trump routinely lays into the press with late night, all cap rants on Truth Social when they call out his lies, exaggerations, contradictions, lack of strategic foresight of the consequences, lack of an exit strategy and constant twisting and turning.  In this he has been strenuously backed up by Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, who bans ‘unpatriotic’ press from Pentagon briefings and Carr, head of FCC (which controls TV and Radio licences) who demands patriotic reporting or else.

Bargaining:  Since Teheran has effectively closed the Straits of Hormuz and the mighty US is powerless against their asymmetric warfare of using cheap drones, Trump has been reduced to bargaining with them using a range of threats that keep evolving as they repeatedly tell him to go hump his camel.

This is roughly the position we have presently reached.

Depression:  Trump’s low energy performances in press briefings and the odd rally, together with his stooped walk indicate a depressed and lost man as yet another of his ‘brilliant’ moves blows up badly in his face.  Attacking Iran was a distraction from the Epstein files but it has gone horribly wrong and he can’t find an exit strategy.  Disastrous midterms are looming when Republicans will probably lose both the House and the Senate so that he won’t be able to implement any policy or control any narrative.  He would be on a double dosage of Xanax if it weren’t for his distraction by bright baubles – he is minting a super large 250-year commemorative gold coin with an image of himself glaring pugnaciously.  He also has the East Wing and the proposed Arc de Trump to dream about during his lonely nights in his cold bed.

Acceptance:  Because Trump or his bro in arms, Nethanyahu, killed the Ayatollah (a direct descendent of Muhammed as witnessed by his black turban), Iran will carry on doing what they are doing no matter the cost until they extract everything from the situation.  Trump has never met this sort of illogical recalcitrance in business and is stymied.  Iran has already indicated that they will not give him an easy out and will only accept total humiliation.  If he had not decapitated their leader, Trump would have stood a chance at some sort of modus vivendi.  Now his only option left is to eat unpalatable humble pie with the Iranians and then spin it back home as a great victory in his inimical way.

It is obvious right from the Vietnam War years and his bonus spurs that Trump is not a military man.  Pressured by the Epstein fallout, tariffs and the tepid economic numbers, Trump needed a win.  Scratching around, the hardline Iran seemed to provide an easy target.  Who could love the mad mullahs who assiduously develop nuclear weapons and have been chanting death to America for 47 years.  And so Operation Epic Fury was born.

Having campaigned on the promise of no foreign interference, let alone war, Trump and his cronies have used every description of the action while studiously avoiding the word, war.  Trump even used the word excursion.

But they were right after all – it was not a war.  It was a miscalculation.  However, they were right about the epic bit – it was Operation Epic Fail.   From the get-go, they were up the Straits without a paddle when they struck Iran on 28 Feb, decapitating the Ayatollah and more than 160 school children.

How did this come about?  Firstly, he has surrounded himself by a coterie of clowns.  There’s Dummkopf Witkoff, the US Special Envoy to the Middle East and his advisor, Jared Kushner, both real estate developers and Jewish to boot.  Then there’s Pete Hegseth, head of the military, who’s claim to fame is that he was a major in the Army which qualifies him only to run something tactical like a battalion and not to fight a war strategically.  Secondly, although the top Generals would have provided proper analysis and options, Trump’s MO is like his BO: he doesn’t need anyone’s help.

But the biggest mistake was not predicting the outcome.  As the resident world bully, all he thought he had to do was to use a bit of shock and awe and Iran would cave.  Not so.  Iran has a population of 90 million, at least half of whom are imbued with pre-renaissance religious fanaticism, and it is too big and rugged to be dominated against their will.  They immediately embarked on asymmetric warfare shooting off cheap drones and rockets at everyone and the dog in the Gulf region thereby widening the conflict.  They have closed off the 6km wide sea lane through the Straits of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas transits and not even the US can operate a naval fleet with impunity in the narrow waters of the gulfs on either side.  Iran’s conventional forces have been comprehensively destroyed yet the cheap drones keep coming and Iran rebuffs any Trumpian overtures with contempt. 

Trump has never bargained with their ilk before and is out of his depth.  He has no exit plan or options in the face of this illogical intransigence.  Although suffering, the Iranian theocracy is laughing at him and are not backing down.  Trump has no cards, an insult that he arrogantly threw at Zelensky during a White House press ambush exactly a year before he attacked Iran.  What delicious payback to the narcissistic bully boy if it weren’t so serious for the world.