Ever since Trump came to power, the abnormal has been regarded as the norm – and nearly all of the world has gone along with it.
(I'm surprised that Meloni hasn't been more of a reactionary.)
Donald Trump has endorsed Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who faces his toughest electoral challenge next month since taking power 16 years ago, as Europe’s far-right leaders gather for a “grand assembly” in Budapest.
In a video message, the US president told the national-conservative Cpac Hungary conference in the capital on Saturday that Orbàn, who has been trailing in the polls behind a centre-right rival for more than a year, was a “fantastic guy”.
Trump, who also backed Orbán on social media last month, said he had been a strong leader who had “shown the entire world what’s possible when you defend your borders, your culture, your heritage, your sovereignty and your values”.
“I hope he wins, and I hope he wins big,” he said.
Orbán responded that the west had become a better place since Trump returned to power, with progressive policies being rolled back and traditional family and Christian values restored.
[...]
Several leading European far-right figures, including Santiago Abascal of Spain’s Vox, André Ventura of Portugal’s Chega, Martin Helme of Estonia’s Ekre and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland’s Law and Justice party, attended the weekend event.
They will be joined on Monday by Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally, Matteo Salvini of Italy’s League and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom party for a “Patriots’ Grand Assembly”, named after their group in the European parliament.
Orbán has long been at loggerheads with the EU over a range of issues. In defiance of Brussels, he has maintained cordial ties with Moscow, refuses to send weapons to Ukraine, and says Kyiv can never join the EU.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Sunday that he was not surprised by a Washington Post report last week that alleged Russia’s foreign intelligence service had proposed staging an assassination attempt against Orbán to boost his chances.
The report also said Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had called his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, during EU summits to brief him. Tusk said it should not come as a surprise that Hungary leaked “every detail” of EU summits to Moscow.
Many of the far-right leaders scheduled to attend Monday’s gathering were among nearly a dozen who endorsed Orbán in a campaign video released in January. In it, Alice Weidel of Alternative für Deutschland said: “Europe needs Viktor Orbán.”
Media reports had previously suggested that the US vice-president, JD Vance, would attend the Budapest gathering, but Szijjártó said last week that the visit would take place in early April instead.
President Donald J. Trump‘s behavior is increasingly erratic as he lashes out at those he perceives to be enemies. On Thursday he defended his failure to inform allies and partners about his February 28 attack on Iran by telling a Japanese reporter he wanted the element of surprise. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?” Trump said, referring to the Japanese attack on Hawaii that took place on December 7, 1941, five years before Trump was born. Sitting beside Trump, the prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, appeared taken aback. Japan is a key Pacific ally of the United States.
The president is under enormous pressure, as his war with Iran sparked Iranian officials to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil flows. This outcome was expected by previous presidents, but Trump seemed to think he could avoid it and now is stuck without an easy solution. As former defense secretary and Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta told David Smith of The Guardian, “If there was an escape here for Trump, it would be to declare victory and it’s over and we’ve been able to be successful in all of our military targets. The problem is he can declare victory all he wants but, if he doesn’t get the ceasefire, he’s got nothing. And he’s not going to get a ceasefire as long as Iran is holding the gun of the strait of Hormuz against his head.”
“He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Panetta told Smith. “If he says it and keeps saying it, there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”
In a frantic attempt to lower oil prices, the administration on Friday lifted sanctions on Iranian oil currently at sea. Iranian oil has been sanctioned since 1979. The lifting of sanctions will enable Iran to sell about 140 million barrels of oil, worth about $14 billion, including to the United States and to China.
National security scholar Phil Gordon, who served as the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region during the Obama administration, posted: “When Obama sent Iran $400m + $1.3bn in interest in 2016 Trump called it ‘insane’ and he and others spent a decade mocking the idea of ‘pallets of cash’ even though it was Iran’s own money, American prisoners were released, courts were likely to require the U.S. payment, and Iran had just agreed to significant and verified reductions and restrictions on its nuclear program for 15+ years.
“Now Trump is giving Iran up to ten times that amount of revenue—one of the most significant measures of sanctions relief provided to the Islamic Republic since its founding—in exchange for marginal and temporary relief from the big increase in oil prices his actions have caused, without any concessions from Tehran, and even as Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies. No way to read as anything other than desperate recognition of the situation Trump’s own actions have created and the lack of available alternatives for dealing with it.”
On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States? We’re gonna give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine? We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”
Trump is also under pressure over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been mired in news stories about corruption since former secretary Kristi Noem stepped down. Yesterday morning, Trump appeared to try to change the momentum of those stories by going on the offensive against Democrats.
New scrutiny of the department has brought renewed attention to the November 2025 ProPublica report by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski that DHS had awarded a $220 million contract for a taxpayer-funded ad campaign to cronies, getting around transparency laws by awarding the contract to a small company that then subcontracted the deal to friends of Noem and her associate Corey Lewandowski. Of the contract, Trump allegedly said: “Corey made out on that one.”
On Thursday, March 19, Julia Ainsley, Matt Dixon, Jonathan Allen, and Laura Strickler of NBC News reported that Lewandowski told George Zoley, the head of the giant private prison company GEO Group, that he expected to be paid for steering contracts to GEO Group. Zoley said he declined initially but later offered to put Lewandowski on retainer with a consulting fee. But, sources told the journalists, Lewandowski “wanted payments—what some people would call a success fee” based on awarded contracts. When Zoley refused, GEO Group lost out on contracts. A senior DHS official told the journalists Lewandowski had told him not to award any more contracts to GEO Group.
Lewandowski’s official title was that of a “special government employee,” with a temporary appointment that permitted him to work only 130 days in a year, but DHS officials told the journalists that Lewandowski had broad authority over contracts in the department and was referred to as “chief.” He allegedly sidestepped the limits of his appointment by going into the building accompanying Noem, and thus without swiping in using his badge. Lewandowski has denied any wrongdoing.
Yesterday Hamed Aleaziz, Alexandra Berzon, Nicholas Nehamas, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported on the extraordinary power Lewandowski had in DHS under Noem, explaining that he held meetings without her present, sat in on classified briefings, read a version of the highly classified President’s Daily Brief, and issued orders as he spearheaded detention and deportation of migrants. In addition to approving government contracts that worried officials, Lewandowski helped put Greg Bovino, a midlevel Border Patrol leader, into a senior position that gave him national power.
At 11:34 yesterday morning, Trump tried to turn the DHS story into one about the Democrats, posting: “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota. I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
This appeared to be a threat to use Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, whom Trump appears to see as his own private army, to hurt Democrats by pinning the long lines in airports on the Democrats’ refusal to fund DHS, which means that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents aren’t being paid. But Democrats have repeatedly proposed funding every agency in DHS other than ICE and Border Patrol, leaving those out until their abuses under Noem, Lewandowski, and Bovino have been addressed. Republicans have refused that funding unless DHS requests are funded in full at the same time.
Under Trump, ICE has become the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S., with an annual budget higher than those of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. While ICE budgets previously had hovered around $6 billion, the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave DHS $85 billion to fund it through September 30, 2029. What is outstanding now is its base budget of around $10 billion. Because ICE agents are considered “essential” workers, they, unlike TSA agents, are getting paid during the funding fight.
Today the administration announced ICE agents will take the place of some TSA agents, although as the former national security officials at The Steady State note, the legality of moving ICE agents into TSA positions isn’t clear. Tonight Trump admitted he is not interested in any deal with the Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless Democrats also agree to the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and to vote, and which is widely understood to be a measure designed to suppress voting. Trump also includes in the measure an end to mail-in voting, and an attack on transgender Americans.
Then, at 1:26 yesterday afternoon, Trump responded to the death of 81-year-old special counsel Robert Mueller by posting: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
As Josh Meyer of USA Today reported, Mueller was a lifelong public servant. He served in combat as a Marine Corps officer in the Vietnam War, during which he was wounded. “I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam,” Mueller said years later. “There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute.” He became a federal prosecutor covering organized crime, terrorism, and public corruption. A conservative Republican nominated by President George W. Bush to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he took office just a week before 9/11 and proceeded to reshape the FBI’s mission from fighting crime to an emphasis on counterterrorism and intelligence.
In 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller special counsel for the Department of Justice to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller’s team filed charges against Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and co-chair Rick Gates for conspiracy to launder money, violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and conspiracy against the United States, and reached a plea agreement with Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian operative and ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Mueller’s team also indicted thirteen Russians and three Russian companies involved in pushing Russian propaganda to American voters. Ultimately the team indicted thirty-four people, including six of Trump’s former advisors, five of whom pleaded guilty.
Mueller’s final report detailed the efforts of Russian operatives to help Trump and hurt Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, saying Russia launched “multiple, systematic efforts” to interfere with the election. Mueller said he had not been able to consider Trump’s guilt because Justice Department policy prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president, but added: “If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.” He refused to say his report “exonerated” Trump, as Trump’s supporters insisted.
A later report by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee agreed that members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, led by Manafort, worked with Russian operatives to help Trump get elected.
Not only is Robert Mueller getting under Trump’s skin, so, clearly, is his own failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. At 7:44 last night, he posted: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
In a conversation with Anne McElvoy of Politico on Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted that attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are war crimes.
Yesterday Julie K. Brown of The Epstein Files, whose work digging into the cover-up of the Epstein story for the Miami Herald has been instrumental in bringing the scandal to light, and her colleague Claire Healy reported that after sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on August 10, 2019, a corrections officer called the FBI’s Threat Operations Center saying the officer “found it suspicious that an after-action team charged with investigation would be shredding huge amounts of paperwork” while FBI agents were in the building.
An inmate who helped shred documents told guards: “They are shredding everything,” and an assistant federal prosecutor noted the destruction or misplacing of relevant records. Another corrections officer wrote to the FBI on August 19 about an unusual amount of shredding and disposal, and suggested: “you may want to investigate why [Bureau of Prisons] employees are destroying records.”
This morning, at 8:24, Trump posted: “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT”
Tonight, just before midnight, he posted: “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, TO PUT IT MILDLY!!!”
We’re now approaching the edge of true catastrophe in Trump’s foolish, reckless war on Iran. When I say “true catastrophe” I mean that civilizational risk is now at severe levels, and we face the growing probability of one of the greatest shocks in modern history—one which could make the closure of the Strait of Hormuz look like a mere childs’ play.
Let me explain. Then we’ll discuss what to do about it, investment wise.
Over the last couple of days, the following happened.
Trump issued an ultimatum, threatening to take down Iran’s energy grid in the next 48 (now 24) hours, if the Strait wasn’t “opened.” I put that in quotes because of course
Iran responded by warning it’d retaliate in kind, hitting not just energy infrastructure across the Middle East, but also, crucially desalination plants. They supply much of the region’s drinking water. Tonight, Iran appears to be walking back that threat, perhaps, but in the fog of war—who knows?
Scott Bessent finally put words to Trump’s “strategy”: “escalate to de-escalate.” We’ll discuss the sheer madness of that in a moment.
So. The clock is now ticking. Let me add one more point before I outline the three scenarios before us now.
From the FT:
“Alongside military bases, those financial entities that finance the US military budget are legitimate targets,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a post on X. “US treasury bonds are soaked in Iranians’ blood. Purchase them, and you purchase a strike on your HQ and assets.”
Why does that matter? It’s linked to the second point above. There are only a handful of nations foolish to have been buying American T-bills, aka Treasury Bonds, in the last year or so—and chief among them are the Middle Eastern players embroiled in this war, like the UAE, Qatar, etc. So what Iran is saying is this: even buying America’s debt is enough for us to target your infrastructure. Perhaps even including, crucially, desalination facilities.
Now. The three scenarios before us are these. Let’s begin with the first one. Iran surrenders, Trump’s ultimatum renders him victorious. Sound probable to you? Not to me. Because here we have a classic contest of strategy: tit-for-tat, escalating. And when that occurs, one side suddenly climbing down is unlikely, especially when its sides as fanatical as these.
The second scenario. Nothing much happens. Trump pretends he never issued the ultimatum, and the war just…grinds on. That’s possible, I suppose, but Trump will lose even more face than he already has, which is a big no-no for a mob boss. And the game here is clear now: escalating tit-for-tat, which by the way is a classic form in game theory, and once a game is a game, it tends to stay that way.
That brings me to the third scenario, and here’s where things get truly catastrophic. The head of the IEA, the International Energy Agency, has warned that this is already greater than the oil shock of the 1970s and Covid: he’s calling it the greatest oil shock in history. But in scenario three, it goes to another level entirely.
Trump bombs Iran’s energy grid. He sends troops to take the Strait, Kharg Island, etcetera. How does Iran respond? Exactly how it said it would. It bombs the Gulf’s energy infrastructure. Maybe even its desalination plants. And then things get very cataclysmic, very fast.
Because in this kind of scenario, the world’s oil and gas supplies begin to shut down. The Gulf nations, without energy and water, or at least under daily bombardment that constantly threatens their infrastructure for energy and water, can’t go on producing oil and gas to the same degree. Who’s going to man the facilities without drinking water or electricity?
And then we have a mega civilizational problem. The Strait of Hormuz closing down is a bottleneck. But oil and gas not being produced at scale across the Gulf because basic infrastructure’s been taken down is another level of risk entirely. A genuinely catastrophic level of civilizational risk.
What would the effects be? The closure of the Strait’s already affecting agriculture, commodities, shipping, and much more. But if oil and gas begin to go offline? Then we’re in the deepest of waters. Then it’s lights out territory, and I mean that literally. Already, nations around the world are beginning to take energy conserving measures. That’s assuming that the oil and gas will flow—eventually. But if the infrastructure’s bombed, charred, turned to rubble—then all bets are off.
Then the world is looking at a scenario it’s never really faced before. A sudden, long-term, energy shortage. Not just a short-term bottleneck, but a hard longer-term supply constraint. Everything goes haywire the moment this occurs.
And we’ve never really been there before. Without oil and gas, a reliable supply of it, everything begins to crash and burn. Factories don’t operate, nor do server farms or AI data centers, nor do financial systems, nor does…anything much. Guess what stock and bond markets do then?
In such a situation, the world would have to take dramatic emergency measures it’s never really taken before so fast and hard. It’d have to implement hard price controls, ration what there was, right down to electricity itself—and by the way, that’s already begun in places, it’s only generally the West which thinks it can’t happen to it, too.
Understand that this would be a situation which would make the Strait’s closure look like child’s play. That’s about tankers full of oil not getting through. But not having enough oil and gas to go around? For who knows precisely how long? The effects would instantly crash every economy on earth.
They’d plunge us into a situation we’ve never really faced before, and merely calling it a “recession” would barely do it justice, because every kind of basic system around us would stop functioning. The closest parallel is of course the early days of the pandemic, but even that is too kind and gentle for the sudden rupture of this macro-scale event, an energy shock of the most severe kind of all.
How long would it take to fully repair devastated infrastructure across the Gulf? Iran bombed Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, which produces about 20% of the world’s LNG, liquified natural gas. It’s going to be offline for months. That gives us some kind of rule of thumb. Imagine that the world’s oil and gas production is brought to half its capacity, for example, for the next six months. What happens then? Don’t kid yourself that reserves will fix the problem: we consume about 100 million barrels of oil a day, and the recent emergency release of the world’s reserves you might have heard of was good for…less than a week at that rate. Just a few days, in fact.
This is the precipice we’re approaching now. An escalating tit-for-tat strategy makes it very, very likely, in fact, that we’ll end up here, eventually, because this is the equilibrium of such a strategy. Bessent’s comment reveals the insanity of the situation we now face. “Escalate to de-escalate” only works if, LOL, either side is thinking rationally. In this case, obviously neither one is: they’re both willing to burn down everything.
So. The Strait itself is now not even the problem we face anymore. We’re now at another level, which isn’t bottlenecks in the world’s oil supply, but the world’s oil supply itself. From here, it’s altogether too easy to see a place where Trump bombs Iran’s energy, and Iran retaliates by bombing the Gulf’s energy and water infrastructure, and from there…the world enters the greatest energy shock in history, period, one of a different magnitude and form entirely, in which perhaps the world’s oil supply isn’t pumped, refined, drilled, and so forth, anymore, at remotely the levels we’re accustomed to.
We are now in a place that we really don’t want to be. Trump is taking us there, step by step. He doesn’t care about the price that the world pays, or that America does. He doesn’t care about anything at all, really, except sadism, power, and violence.
Yes, in a sane world, we should have transitioned to clean energy a decade ago, and we’ll talk more about that, too.
For now, what I suggest doing is this. Cash out. Do not play games with this. I’ve been urging you to do this for the last several weeks, and this is my final warning.
If the scenario above comes to pass, we are all but certain to have the greatest stock and bond market crashes in modern history. A world which can’t supply itself with energy for the next year is one which will become a very, very frightening place, very fast. In such a world, every single market on the planet will crash fast and hard, and they will not recover easily or quickly.
I’m not saying that it will happen this way. I’m saying that nobody should take this risk. Nobody. The risk is so extreme it’s hard to put into words—a world without enough energy. Be safe and cash out of this mess until it’s over. As we enter this zone of civilizational catastrophe, the world as we know it will never be the same again. Trump is now taking us to the brink of a world that cannot keep the lights on. He has always wanted to take us back to the Dark Ages, and now, here we are, on the very cusp.
Today and tomorrow, Italians will vote in a referendum on whether the judiciary should be reformed as she wishes. Because this would require a constitutional amendment, the people have the final say following Parliament’s approval. Meloni emphasises at every opportunity that she is solely concerned with the issue at hand. But of course, the decision on ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is also a measure of how much the people trust her.
Should she win the referendum, politics would gain influence over personnel decisions.
The ruling coalition argues that the balance of power between politics and the judiciary needs to be readjusted. Critics, on the other hand, see this as a threat to the separation of powers and the independence of judges and prosecutors.
Some believe that this could also make the fight against the Mafia – which remains influential in some areas – more difficult. Like the opposition, the major lawyers’ associations also reject the proposal.
Initially, a clear victory for Meloni was expected. However, it now looks as though it could be a close call – especially as President Sergio Mattarella is also playing a role behind the scenes, the only politician in Italy who is currently even more popular than the right-wing head of government.
Shortly after the close of the U.S. stock market on Friday, President Donald J. Trump appeared to try to address the losses it had sustained since his February 28 attack on Iran by posting that the war was “winding down.” This reassurance appeared designed to calm market fears over the weekend.
But then, at 7:44 Saturday evening, Trump posted: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Aside from the fact that attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime, this threat against Middle East oil infrastructure made the market teeter again, especially after Iran threatened to strike power plants in Israel and other Gulf states.
Then, at 7:23 this morning, Trump posted: “I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
The five-day period in which Trump promised to hold off on this particular threat—the war itself continues—coincides with the days the stock market is open.
According to The Kobeissi Letter, which analyzes the stock market, the S&P 500 surged upward by 240 points. The price of Brent crude oil dropped to $96 a barrel.
Then Iran denied Trump’s claims and said its leaders had had “no direct or indirect contact” with Trump’s people. Iran’s foreign ministry suggested Trump was trying “to reduce energy prices and to buy time for implementing his military plans.” It said that countries in the region had approached Iran to begin negotiations and that “our response to all of them is clear: we are not the party that started this war, and all such requests should be directed to Washington.”
The S&P fell 120 points and the price of Brent crude rose to about $100 a barrel.
“What is happening here?” wrote Adam Kobeissi about the stock market in his newsletter.
The answer to which social media posters jumped was market manipulation. Economist Paul Krugman suggested the same in a post today, noting that someone who had insider knowledge “could have sold a bunch of crude oil futures, at very high prices, Brent was over $112 over the weekend, then bought them back immediately after Trump’s announcement of triumphal progress, but before the Iranians said that is not happening. And you could have turned a very, very nice, very large profit.”
Indeed, by the end of the day, reporters like Yun Li at CNBC noted that about fifteen minutes before Trump’s announcement there had been a sudden and sharp jump in S&P 500 futures and oil futures.
Krugman had other observations as well, though. Trump threatened to “commit a massive war crime” by striking civilian energy facilities and “must be looking for a way out.” Krugman noted that there is no apparent reason for Iranian leaders to be making a deal right now: it seems pretty clear that protracting the war constitutes winning in the metric of humiliating the U.S.
Krugman goes on to make a major point: “Think about how much America’s position in the world has been weakened, not just by apparent failure to subdue a fourth-rate power, but by the fact that everybody now knows that you cannot trust anything, cannot trust any promises the United States makes, you cannot count on the United States carrying through with promises, with threats, not just promises, but threats are also incredible in the sense of not being all credible, and that the default assumption should be that anything that this administration says is a lie.”
Trump doubled down on his post this morning when he talked to reporters at Palm Beach International Airport, seeming to see an off-ramp from the conflict. He claimed that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is speaking with “a top person” in Iran, “the man who, I believe, is the most respected and the leader…not the supreme leader…but the people that seem to be running [Iran].”
Barak Ravid of Axios later reported that Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—both freelancers who have financial ties to the Middle East—rather than the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have sent messages to the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, through Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey, where intermediaries are trying to set up a call between U.S. and Iranian negotiators. Ghalibaf is a close associate of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
Trump seemed to consider that plan a done deal and said the U.S. and Iranian negotiators would talk today by phone. He continued: “We’ll at some point very soon meet. We’re doing a five-day period. We’ll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we’re gonna end up with settling this, otherwise we just keep bombing our little hearts out.”
Kaitlan Collins of CNN asked Trump, “You’ve said there’s many points of agreement with Iran right now. Can you give us a few of them?” He answered, “Many. Like fifteen points. Fifteen points.”
Collins followed up: “That Iran has said yes to?”
Trump replied: “Well, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon. That’s number one. That’s number one, two, and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Collins asked: “They’ve said yes to that?”
Trump replied: “They’ve agreed to that.”
When another reporter asked if Iran has agreed “to no enrichment whatsoever, even for medical purposes, civilian purposes,” Trump answered: “They have.”
Then Collins asked, “What about the Strait of Hormuz? Who’s going to be in control of that?” Trump answered: “That’ll be opened very soon if this works.” To questions of how soon, he responded, “Immediately.”
Asked who would control the strait, he answered: “Uhhhhh, [it’ll] be jointly controlled.”
“By who?” Collins asked.
“Maybe me. Maybe me,” Trump said. Not the United States, or an international coalition, but “[m]e and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is…. And there’ll also be… a very serious form of regime change. Now in all fairness, everybody’s been killed from the regime…. But we’re dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They’re very respected, and maybe one of them will be exactly what we’re looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that’s working out. We are doing so well in Venezuela, with oil and with the relationship between the president-elect and us. And maybe we find someone like that in Iran.”
Today, at the Palm Beach airport, a reporter asked Trump: “If the war is ending, do you still need $200 billion?” Trump answered: “We, ah, it’s always nice to have. It’s always nice to have. It’s a very inflamed world.”
