The Wall Street Journal claimed yesterday that President Trump told his aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, unnamed administration officials said.
“In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks,” WSJ reported. “He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.”
Not surprisingly, the war party went nuts over such a notion. Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president at the Brookings Institution in Washington, called ending military operations before the strait is open “unbelievably irresponsible (never mind that launching the war in the first place was itself “unbelievably irresponsible” —ed.).” The U.S. and Israel started the war together and can’t walk away from the fallout, said Maloney. “Energy markets are inherently global, and there is no possibility of insulating the U.S. from the economic damage that is already occurring and will become exponentially worse if the closure of the strait continues.”
