Europe to Mango: YOU BROKE IT, YOU FIX IT.
Europe won't risk blood and treasure to resolve Iran's blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.
So, Trump, having now completely screwed up oil deliveries to Israel and the U.S., has asked Europe to send ships to help clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines and defend oil tankers against Iranian assaults.
Response? “Nein, mein freunden!”
Secretary of State Scott Bessent says that Iranian, Indian and Chinese tankers are making it through—because the Iranians are letting them, certainly by giving them guarantees not to fire on them, and maybe also giving them the location of mine clusters or turning off the mines.
But, American ships will find it hard to access, say, Sea Island Terminal off Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to pick up a little light sweet crude. They’re going to have a problem, and that is a problem for Trump, who is single-handedly responsible for the worldwide surge in oil prices. That wins the United States no friends.
Now he’d like to make our allies responsible for solving the problem he’s created, and they’re not having it. As The Guardian notes, a negative response from Europe …
… comes after Donald Trump called on the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the world’s busiest shipping route, which has been effectively blockaded by Iran.
The US president said it would be “very bad for the future of Nato” if allies don’t help secure the strait.
Is that a fact? This is NATO’s problem now? Trump makes a mess that affects the whole world, and now he’s threatening NATO, effectively saying, “You fix this or we pull out”??? Is that what’s happening here?
The Hormuz Strait is closed ONLY to Israeli and American Shipping
But shipping isn’t closed to everyone. It is ONLY closed to U.S. and Israeli shipping, so this is NOT the world’s problem at all. And if Bessent seems happy everyone else’s ships are getting through, that only shines a light on the fact that he intends to lie and say that Iran is doing this only to us because they have special backroom deals with Modi and Putin, that’s not the case, though Putin couldn’t be happier to see the U.S. ground down in a war with Iran than aiding Ukraine.
But ultimately, the U.S. whining that “we’re all in this together” is a total lie. Iran’s strangling of oil trade applies to two countries, and two only.
The rest is a total smokescreen to make the world believe that Iran is intent upon holding the world hostage with oil—blocking Saudi Arabia’s exports—and it is not.
Why Are We Fighting Israel’s War?
It may well be that Netanyahu, already indicted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has something on Trump. He has steadfastly stood by Netanyahu—and Bolsonaro—despite their human rights abuses—and attempts to subvert fair elections and justice in their own countries.
Bolsonaro is doing more than two decades in prison after trying to overthrow a fair election.
Netanyahu used the hideous October 7th attack to try to wipe Palestinians off every acre of Gazan land, much to the glee of Jared Kushner, who wants to turn the vestiges of Palestinian history into a seaside resort. This drew attention away from Netanyahu’s attempt to gut the Israeli Supreme Court to prevent its sending him to prison for graft.
But although Trump clearly believes that gluing himself to tyrants makes him safer, there’s probably something greedier in the mix.
Trump wants oil. As much as he can get.
Let’s see. What doesn’t he want? He wants Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil and Honduran rare early elements and precious ores. But who really owns the greatest levels of the world’s oil reserves?
BlackRock - One of the world’s largest asset managers with significant investments in oil companies.
Vanguard Group - A major investment firm holding substantial shares in various oil and gas corporations.
State Street Global Advisors - Another large asset manager with considerable stakes in the energy sector.
Saudi Aramco - The state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, one of the largest producers globally.
ExxonMobil - A leading oil and gas corporation with extensive investments and operations worldwide.
Chevron - A major player in the oil industry, involved in exploration, production, and refining.
And what about people? We know about Howard Hamm and the Kochs, but what about the Tech Bros—those guys who spent billions to elect Trump, fawned over his inauguration with $1 million dollar gifts and got shown off like fatted calves, and then turned around and forked over $20 million each (at last report) for his horribly tasteless White House ballroom?
Tech Bros heavily invested in oil
Alarmed in the run-up to the election and panicked afterwards, the editors of Food and Water Watch were clear by April of 2025 that we were in deep trouble.
Our current political landscape — chaos, growing corporate power, and endangered food, water, and climate — is no accident. A small number of billionaires and wealthy CEOs have brought it into being.
They’ve invested millions in getting Donald Trump to the White House and his cronies into Congress. … They have more license than ever to run roughshod over our shared resources, make life worse for workers and families, and enrich themselves even further. This is an oligarchy.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Big Tech and fossil fuel industries. Trump directly appealed to oil and gas executives for campaign donations, which they happily provided. He’s now stripping environmental regulations and halting federal clean energy funding.
Where all this goes is that the richest people in America have a lot of oil investments — and they use a lot of energy, and they are NOT investing in alternative means. Which means: they want that spigot to remain pouring oil, and they are backing the destruction of health guardrails to make sure it does. Food and Water Watch again:
For his part, Zuckerberg’s moves to cozy up to Trump could help Meta avoid regulations, as the company has been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Zuckerberg has also said that Meta will work with Trump to oppose the European Union’s heavier speech regulations on social media platforms.
Like Musk and Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos stands to benefit heavily from deregulation and the gutting of government agencies. As the third-richest man in the world (after Musk and Zuckerberg), he gets most of his wealth from his shares of Amazon stock. Regulatory action stands in the way of more profits for Amazon and more wealth for Bezos.
And note that deregulation also means that big polluters get to keep doing it. Trump signed an executive order last week declaring that no one can sue Monsanto if they get cancer from Round-up (glyphosate), which has already been proved to be carcinogenic.
Why? Trump will become dictator or go to jail.
It will take every billionaire’s efforts to keep Trump in office, get elections cancelled, and make him dictator. They seem to feel that it’s worth their while.
They have overtaken virtually all the major news outlets and are now threatening journalists who write unfavorable Iran reports the president doesn’t like.
They want ultimate deregulation and no limits on the amount of water and oil they can use for AI—and more coal, too, if they can get it.
They are making every possible effort to pass SAVE — which gives the Republicans the Midterms, Trump believes. If Thune’s filibuster doesn’t work this week? “Bad,” Trump mumbles. “Bad.”
The world should not fix the mess Trump has made.
Iran is a rogue nation with blood on its hands. It has tortured and murdered dissidents. It has created a regime so hideously repressive of women that it ranks second only to the Taliban. It is a regime that needs to be replaced by a religion-neutral government with a rights-based constitution.
And this was the stupidest possible way to go about making a bad situation even worse. Israel’s attack on Khomenei’s home, with more than 58 government officials present (most killed), left the IRCG intact. It’s not Mojtaba Khomenei who is running Iran. He lost a leg in the attack and was hospitalized in Russia for surgery. Now he’s back, but he’s NOT in charge. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, with its sprawling worldwide financial influence and iron grip on the lives of Iranians, stepped right in and ran a retaliatory war against Israel and the United States.
In poking the wrong bear, Trump has enraged public opinion against the United States worldwide, and the terrorist attacks over this stupid move—when Iranians have waged a brave five-year battle for liberalization of their culture—is 100% counterproductive.
And the media in the United States, owned by Tech-Bros and Oil Oligarchs will lie to us about what is going on, like Bessent just did, but it won’t help.
We’ll know.
Excellent summary. Bad news as expected but knowing the enemy is preferable to ignorance. Thank you! ❤️🕊️🥰