Martin Jay
Things just got a whole lot more crazy for Donald Trump, as now it seems his bombing campaign has made the Houthis shut down the Suez Canal. Oh shit.
The unintended consequences of meddling in matters you have no idea about - or, put more in popular social media terms, "f-cking around and finding out" - is about to hit Donald Trump in the coming hours. Just shortly after February 28th, some pundits will still remember how he whined to White House press wasters that he was shocked how Iran would hit U.S. bases in the GCC countries. Now expect a different shock regarding the Houthis and the Bab el Mandeb, as this group just destroys two Saudi oil tankers who dared to pass through these straits. This is a new kind of Dante's hell now for Donald Trump and all Western leaders, as the escalation trap has cranked up the stakes now to denying Saudi Arabia its oil revenues from exports, as KSA can no longer even use its pipelines to the Red Sea anymore. Presumably MBS and his cronies are not body-slamming one another after they decided that bombing the Houthis was a smart move.
Just before the Houthis hit the two ships, Trump told reporters that he'd "take care" of the Houthis if they were to go ahead with their threats - clearly a warning not taken remotely seriously by the group, whose decision to hit Saudi tankers - and presumably those of the UAE as well - is going to have even bigger shock waves than the Straits of Hormuz being closed. Trump is trapped. It's as though the razor-wire straitjacket which he is in gets tighter and cuts deeper every time he makes a stupid threat, as, until now, he is still not taking Iran seriously as a regional power which can really hit the U.S. hard when it is provoked. This all came about by Trump's decision to go ahead and bomb civilian infrastructure in Iran - one of many sensationally careless moves by the U.S. president, who analysts all agree has no strategy whatsoever in Iran - a country which is spoilt for choice in how it retaliates. The Bab el Mandeb straits, which U.S. TV presenters are going to rename 'Straits of Mindab' probably, is now the real focus of attention, as if insurance companies deem the risk too high, hundreds of ships will choose not to even enter to reach the Suez Canal but prefer to circumnavigate the entire African continent, with the cost passed on to consumers and markets left with the jitters. Possibly the greatest military defeat in the history of America is beginning to unfold, as the entire global economy braces itself for a series of shock waves about to hit it. The UK, for example, is reported to have only about two weeks' reserve of diesel oil, while other countries like Australia have no oil reserves whatsoever; America is reported to be down to its lowest oil reserves ever.
And yet Trump continues with his bombing, impervious to the global calamity and the consequences of his own egregious stupidity and determination to get a different outcome from repeating the same action. The detachment from reality might be short-lived, though, when global shortages around the world of hundreds of products, and the price hikes and panic buying, start to fill the media timeline and it starts to affect U.S. consumers. No matter how much he brazenly lies to the cameras about the situation in the war, he won't be able to blame the Iranians for food shortages, higher gas prices and mass layoffs as we see the early stages of an economic meltdown. Many economists have been predicting this will start sometime in September. Great losses are coming America's way.
According to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, he can't quite believe the madness of what he is witnessing and questions Trump's sanity: "We have a disaster. We have an insane conflict that there's no way the United States is going to extricate itself from without great losses," he recently said in a podcast. "It's already taking great losses. There's no way Iran is going to lose. All it's got to do is remain 93 million people in a country the size of Western Europe with variegated terrain you wouldn't believe if you were there and seeing it, and temperatures to go along with it, and mountains and deserts to go along with it. It isn't going away anytime soon. And oh, by the way, did I mention that it has an ally named China, the number one economy in the world, and another ally named Russia, probably the most battle-hardened military and defence industrial base in the world ? Did I mention that ? That's where we are with this insane president who started out wanting a better deal than the black man in the White House."