Stupid Trump Will Get the US Thrown Out of the Gulf, Soon

The man really is very stupid. He seems to believe that only he has agency and that, by telling lies, everyone will believe him each time until he exposes the lie and starts the process all over. He believes that he can use the Amerikan legal system (or principles at least) against his domestic enemies AND anyone and any group or country in the world, forever and without any countermoves of effect. Deny (lie that all is fixed), delay (lie again), and litigate (bomb them), restart the process, and fundamentally, outlast them.

He does not realise that he is being played by Iran. They have decided they are going to destroy him, and that is exactly what their strategy is all about right now. 

They are playing him at his own game, letting him make declarations, only desultorily reminding the world that they are Trump’s declarations, not theirs. And each time he backs down to restart the clock (a variation on his legal strategy in US cases – wait, then file a new lawsuit), the world knows what he is doing and looks to Tehran for more, dare I say it, balanced information.

His history has included continuing the cycle until the opponent is bankrupt, or until he files for bankruptcy (much rarer) and blackmails the banks into keeping him personally solvent for the next round.

Today he is trying the same tactics on the international stage, and he thinks he’s getting away with it. “The Strait is open, and traffic is flowing”, while the world can look at the maps and see the lie in front of their faces.

On no planet does this look like “open and traffic is flowing”.

Strait of Hormuz traffic as at 08:00 CET, 16 July 2026

And to all casual observation, and certainly to his sycophants who cannot survive even after being told the truth, he is succeeding. 

Apologies for inserting a sports analogy, but it is World Cup season: We are still early in this game. Halftime is still months away, and the second half is going to be brutal. Leading into the midterms, Trump thinks he’s winning, or at least he’s doing everything he can to be able to claim a win.

Iran is not playing. Or maybe more accurately, Iran is playing him, not his game.

My expectation is that Iran will string Trump along just as he thinks he is stringing Iran along.

It bears repeating: Iran has been preparing for a war with the US, the ‘West’, and the Gulf States for over 45 years. They’ve implemented a command-and-control system designed to survive decapitation, as we have seen. They know “the Great Satan” will be back, and they know the war will hurt. They survived almost ten years of war with Iraq, and they fully expect the war with Trump to be protracted. 

They know they can ‘outlast’ Trump, and they will.

To Iran, the alternative is another war in six months or a year, and continued sanctions and attempted strangulation of their economy and intentional destabilisation of their regime. Peace on Trump’s terms, or even peace resulting from Trump’s boredom, will not deliver any improvement in the longer-term prospects for Iran or the regime.

Trump has been preparing for a war with Iran for nine months, at most, and has surrounded himself with sycophants who have not been telling him the truth about Iranian capabilities and will to fight. Before the war, Trump was told that there was a risk that Iran would close the Strait, but he shrugged that off and, and his chief military advisor did not adequately assert the level of risk (a certainty).

Venezuela was a fantastic success (watch this space, however), and there was no reason that Iran would not be an even bigger success. And if it wasn’t a success, at least it will have provided a nationalism-inspiring distraction from the Epstein Files and other domestic frustrations. Any blowback from war with Iran would be manageable, and possibly even advantageous in keeping his minions in order. After all, for “47 years” Iran has been at war with Amerika, so anything that goes wrong is, of course, Obama's or Biden’s fault.

He even used the word “excursion” in describing the war. 

Iran does not see this as an Amerikan "excursion"; it sees this as Iran’s opportunity to push the US out of the Gulf, completely. And they will fight this war to accomplish exactly that.

If the US continues to attack civilian infrastructure in Iran, or attacks power stations or desalination plants, Iran will respond against the Gulf States. Until now, the restraint has been incredible. When we read that Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, or even Saudi Arabia have been attacked, in almost every case, the attacks are aimed at US bases in those countries, or are responses to attacks on their (Iranian) oil infrastructure.

But Iran will reach a breaking point, and they will warn their Gulf neighbours that any attacks that use their neighbour's airspace or facilities based in the Gulf countries will be considered an attack by those Gulf countries. At that time, the Gulf countries will need to make a choice: come under attack themselves (not attacks on Amerikan bases) or stop the Amerikans from using them as launch points, whether ground, sea or airspace.

When Iran starts attacking Gulf desalination plants, that will signal the endgame for Amerikan hegemony. Yes, the Gulf states will be in open warfare against Iran, but that will be little different from the current status of letting someone else be in open warfare with Iran on their behalf.

In summary, Trump cannot win this war, and will be humiliated, and the US will be forced into a humiliating retreat, no matter how he spins this.

Scat and the Powerful

What is it about powerful people and scat? Trump shits himself; that is now an accepted part of his image. And yet, he does nothing to rebut the allegation, or to have his minions sue or threaten to sue anyone who says he shits himself. 

 

Maxwell would smear the toilet wall on his private jet, forcing the crew to clean it up after he left the plane. Why? Why do something so degrading to oneself and expose those around you to it? 

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that shitting oneself, for ‘normal’ people, is a deeply shaming experience. But for the narcissistically powerful, it is another mechanism to exercise control over others, by forcing them to accept that they are subservient to the shitter. 

 

Post-shame is also about power. The power to subvert other, less powerful, but nonetheless previously perceived as powerful people. Marco Rubio is a good example. Formerly a Senator from Florida, but with his ‘promotion’ to a combination of jobs in the Trump White House, now a person with no individual power. He is now subservient to Trump, emasculated and forced to parrot Trump, to praise him, and to wear the misfitting shoes that were ordered for him. He must even lie and say the shoes fit, even when everyone in the room can see they do not. 

 

Furthermore, he must stand (or sit) and heap praise on someone he finds personally loathsome, and must lie on that person’s behalf, no matter how trivial, or major, the lie.  He must also sit (or stand) there, pretending he is not being washed over by waves of the stink of shit.  

 

This is the ultimate power: to force once powerful people (and little people) to accept that they must accept the literal shit of the person who can destroy them.  

 

And that is what Scat is to powerful people, the proof that they can so humiliate and humble the once powerful that they are reduced to cleaning up the shit of their now-masters. 

Trump is looking at the wrong Gulf Economy

Trump needs to stop bleating on about how the Iranian economy is on the verge of collapse, and start looking at the economies of his “allies” in the Gulf. The immediate and longer term impact on the Gulf countries only gets deeper every day Trump continues his blockade (of the Iranian blockade) of the Strait. UAE is the first to ‘break’ with history, declaring that it is withdrawing from OPEC and OPEC+, a direct rebuke to Washington on its neighbours who are not pushing back against Washington.

Economic hardship can lead to social unrest. Trump is claiming that is imminent in Iran. He’s looking in the wrong direction. 

I repeat my earlier predictions that, unless Trump finds a way out of this mess (more bombs will only make it worse), the end will be a Middle East free of Amerikan bases and  power, a humbled Amerika, and potentially an economically failing Amerika.

I keep seeing the figure “$500 million per day” that the war is costing the Iranian economy in lost oil revenue and associated economic activity. While I’m sure there is some substantiation of this number, it seems to be, um, cherry picked, at best. After all, Iran was  exporting 3.2 million bbl/d before the war, and is estimated to be exporting 1.5 million bbl/d now,so a drop of 1.7million bbl/day. At the wartime price of $90/bbl,that would come to $153 million/day in lost oil revenue.

Based on the pre-war price of oil and Iran producing 3.2 million bbl, their ‘revenue’ would have been around $208 million/day. The difference, and my maths is complete rubbish on this, seems to be around $55 million/day, not $500 million/day. So even if my maths is completely off, I cannot see the net negative oil revenue impact being more than $50 - $75 million/day, even including knock-on effects to the rest of the Iranian economy. The Trump administration's numbers are a fantasy.

That number is for lost oil sales, yet Iranian oil was already under sanction, so oil revenues would not have been anywhere near that level - or it shouldn’t have been.

Missing from this is the daily cost to Trumpian “allies” in the Middle East whose oil exports have stopped or been hugely curtailed by the Iranian/Trumpian blockade of the Strait.

When we look at Saudi Arabia, their oil production has dropped by half from 9 million/d to 4.5 million/d, or a  loss of oil revenue of $405 million per day, three times the supposed Iranian losses. But again, let’s consider the pre-war and current price in the estimated lost revenue. So 9 million barrels per day versus 4.5 million at $90 results in a current net loss around $90 million/day. Again, terrible maths would suggest an ongoing loss of $90 - $150/day.

These losses are being felt across the Gulf. Total gulf revenues are probably down by over a half billion per day across all  products, in terms of exports only. Internal economic activity across the Gulf states is also falling, rippling out from the energy sector across economies.

In Dubai, the property sector has taken what I expect will be a multi-year negative hit to valuations, and the coming ‘safety’ premium payable to attract knowledge workers will increase while property values plummet. The same is happening in Qatar’s property and financial markets, and their LNG production capacity has been damaged and will take years to recover, stunting future income to pay for their recovery.

In all Gulf countries, migrants and manual labour (including lower skilled construction and services) are suffering. How long before there is open unrest? Will those countries begin to see serious problems with their migrant workforce? Historically anyone who stepped even a little out of line could simply be ‘put on a plane’ out. That’s not possible now. 

If the US carries out Trump’s threats against bridges and power infrastructure, what will be the impact on Gulf states if their power infrastructure is damaged? What will be the impact of loss of desalination and the availability of that most fundamental resource? How long will the poor, and yes the Gulf countries are full of the poor, accept degrading conditions. 

The Arab Spring was a series of economic rebellions. Are we looking at a Gulf Summer?

The more Trump ignores the potential impact on his “allies”, the sooner they will understand, as the Qatari Foreign Minister said, they have been living next to Iran and Iranians for centuries, and will continue to live next to them into the future. And the more they will understand that good, or at least tolerable, relations with their neighbour will be more important than very flawed relations with a stranger who has shown a willingness to abandon them at a moment's notice.

Gulf relations with the US and the world a year from now will be unrecognisable.

1974 Quneitra; Technique Practiced, Applied ever since.

In the final days of the 1967 "6-Day War", Israeli forces advanced on Damascus. At the centre of the Golan Heights stood the city of Quneitra, the capital of the province of the same name, and home to around 20,000 people. With the Israeli army advancing and with conflicting messages from the Syrian military high command, the city was abandoned by the Syrian army on the final day of the war.

This was a war of aggression, waged by Israel against its Arab neighbours, with the explicit purposes of territorial expansion and the destruction of the military capabilities of those who would oppose the Zionist state.

Quneitra was not returned to Syrian control until June 1974, when a destroyed shell was returned. Following the 6-Day War, Israel stripped Quneitra of anything of value, shipping it to Israel to be auctioned off. The contents of the hospital were shipped to Israeli hospitals, and the building was used for assault training. The bullet holes merged around windows, turning formerly square openings into curved corners and almost round forms. The stairs inside the building were also pockmarked and were no longer safe to walk on, for fear they would collapse.

Throughout the city, over 4,000 structures, mostly houses and shops, were demolished in the months leading up to the handover. While Israel claimed that the damage was due to shelling and combat during the October/Yom Kippur War, the post-war investigation by engineers appointed by the UN discounted that claim. The damage came from the systematic destruction of buildings, with supports pulled out by tractors or dynamited. 

The intent was clear: to make Quneitra uninhabitable and therefore unable to serve as any kind of administrative or market centre for the Golan, paving the way to claim the Golan is unpopulated and therefore available for settlement by Israel.

When I went to Quneitra as a teen in the late 1970s, the grass was growing around the demolished buildings, and trees were beginning to grow through destroyed roofs, obscuring the remaining doorframes and garden walls. 

At the time, there wasn't an expression for what they did. We learned a new expression during the Yugoslavian civil war: Ethnic Cleansing. The removal of entire populations and by so doing attempting to demographically, and permanently, erase a population from an area. Is it genocide? Maybe a sub-genocide, or genocide-lite.

The ongoing Liquidation of the Gaza Ghetto is a form of genocide, of that there can be no doubt. Entire families killed, almost every school destroyed, libraries, museums, hospitals, mosques and churches, administrative buildings, tens of thousands of homes. All destroyed. 

Every family photo, gone. Every memento, from parents and grandparents, every keepsake, almost all documentation proving who anyone is and their relationship to each other and to places, destroyed. That favourite serving dish. The carpet from the living room. The posters from the children's walls. Destroyed. The plants on the balcony, the trees in the garden and parks, destroyed. A people, defined by their culture and their documented heritage, erased. 

That is genocide.

Israel, as I write, is now doing the same thing in South Lebanon. BBC today reports that over 1400 buildings have been destroyed, probably many more.

Towns and villages in southern Lebanon are being levelled by Israeli demolitions, satellite images and videos obtained by BBC Verify reveal.

BBC Verify analysis found more than 1,400 buildings had been destroyed since 2 March based on verified visual evidence.

This is just a snapshot of the overall damage caused by Israeli air strikes and demolitions, because of limited access on the ground and available satellite imagery. The true scale is likely to be much higher. 

In 1974 and 1975, the UN voted to condemn the Israeli destruction of Quneitra. The US voted against both resolutions. Israeli learned then that not only could they carry out Ethnic Cleansing, but refined their techniques for doing so.

My visit to Quneitra was disturbing then. The fact that Israel continues to follow this model is more than disturbing; it is an indictment of the Zionist state. Human rights violations are part of the DNA of the Zionist state, and there is nothing that will change that.

On a hopeful note: there may come a time when no person who has served in the IDF for the past three years will be able to leave Israel for fear of an international arrest warrant waiting for them, for crimes against humanity at worst, and as an accessory and material witness to crimes against humanity. I look forward to that day.

Sources:

1. Personal memories

2. The Gun and the Olive Branch, David Hirsh, 1978

3. Six Days of War, Michael B. Oren, 2002

4. The Yom Kippur War, Abraham Rabinovich, 2004

5. BBC (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxkk1vnp57o accessed today)

6. Who can do anything without a little Wikipedia?