Only One Man to Blame

Trump seems dumbfounded by all the things going badly in Iran

Iran retaliates, hitting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Credit: Getty Images

It’s long been our mission here at Steady to help you navigate uncertain times. As we know, knowledge is power. And while we always aim to calm fears and ease anxiety, we also owe you the truth. Some days, that can be tough. And today is one of those days.

Increasingly, the president and his administration appear to have little to no idea of what they are doing when it comes to Iran — a muddled strategy, if any, no endgame, no clear picture of when and how this ends, and no one with the gumption to tell the commander in chief the truth.

In less than a month, Donald Trump has managed not only to endanger the U.S. economy, but most economies around the world. Quite a feat.

Today’s big headline is “Donald Trump Lied.” We could begin almost every piece with that sentence. But today’s lie is a whopper even by Trump standards, with massive implications. To get a clear understanding of those consequences, we need to back up 24 hours.

On Wednesday, Israel bombed Iran’s enormous natural gas facility, South Pars. It’s used primarily for domestic consumption by the Iranians. In retaliation, Iran twice bombed the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar. These attacks on global energy infrastructure sent markets reeling and prices rocketing skyward.

Soon after Iran’s second strike, overnight Wednesday, Trump took to social media to tell the Israelis and Iranians to essentially knock it off. In the post, the president said he knew nothing about Israel’s plans to bomb South Pars.

Not true, according to U.S. officials who spoke with the Wall Street Journal and Axios. They reported that not only did he know, he supported the military action to send a message to Tehran: Open up the Strait of Hormuz or else.

The president’s support of attacks on oil infrastructure anywhere is perhaps the most damaging thing he has done. Look at what it unleashed. Trump is now backing down from championing similar attacks, believing Iran got the message. Or maybe things have gone from bad to worse that he has no choice but to rethink what he is doing. And many observers argue that he should rethink it, for a multitude of reasons.

The U.S. Economy Doesn’t Like War
Oil prices are continuing their northward trek. As of this writing, Brent crude is $103 a barrel. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. jumped from $2.98 to $3.88 since the war began. The stock market, which has remained robust through most of Trump’s second term, is not so sanguine about the war in Iran. U.S. stocks have fallen by about 4% with global markets faring even worse.

On top of all that sobering news, Thursday’s inflation report was worse than expected. Inflation is up to 3.4%. Hiring has stagnated and wage growth is falling. The federal debt is now $36 trillion, up $2 trillion in just seven months. And many economists are predicting a recession if hostilities don’t end soon in the Middle East.

Every U.S. recession — except the one in 2020 caused by the pandemic — has been preceded by rising oil prices. Moody’s puts the odds of a recession in the next year at 49%. Even if the war ends tomorrow, fixing the mess will take time. Don’t expect to see prices drop as quickly as they jumped.

The War Is As Unpopular As It is Costly
On the heels of all of the bad economic news, the Pentagon is reportedly asking the White House to approve a $200 billion request to Congress to further fund the war in Iran. That sum is considerably more than expected, and it signals the military thinks the conflict may well drag on longer than expected, though no one actually knows what to expect.

The White House is said to be weighing the idea of sending in ground troops, specifically to secure the Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island, according to Reuters.

That is a hugely unpopular option. In a survey from Data for Progress released Wednesday, 68% of voters oppose deploying ground troops to Iran. Even half of Republicans do not support the option.

Any entry of ground troops would raise the specter of “mission creep,” the military’s term for what happened in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. That is, what starts out to be a limited operation “creeps” into a larger and much more costly war.

Trump’s overall approval rating is dropping in sync with the bombs in Iran. According to The Silver Bulletin polling average, his net approval is now -15.3, the worst of his second term.

Gabbard on The Hot Seat
For the second day in a row, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is on Capitol Hill to answer questions about the run-up to the war in Iran. Day two isn’t going much better than day one.

On Wednesday, in her opening remarks Gabbard omitted — for time, she claims — a line that was in her written remarks. It said, since Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “obliterated” by Trump in June, “there have been no efforts since to rebuild their enrichment capability.”

Democrats on the committee noted the omission since it undercuts the now-stated reason for the war.

At that hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard bizarrely abdicated her most important authority to Trump, saying it is his job to determine who is a threat to the U.S.. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) pressed her on whether there was an “imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.”

Ossoff: “Yes or no?”

Gabbard: “It is not a responsibility of the intelligence community to determine what is or is not an imminent threat.”

Ossoff: “It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.”

And the responsibility of the 80,000 members of the American intelligence community to make nonpolitical judgments about what constitutes a threat to the security of the country.

Gabbard’s testimony solidified an alarming reality: Everything is decided by one man, Donald Trump. The job of the massive federal government is simply to prop him up, to parrot him, and to do his bidding. No one in his orbit is allowed an original thought, especially if it runs counter to what he wants. And what he wants is a constantly moving target.

One of Gabbard’s colleagues in the intelligence community has had enough. Joe Kent, an avowed isolationist and MAGA poster boy, resigned as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday. In a scathing resignation letter, he said, “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Trump Is An Island Of His Own Making
Trump is not only isolating himself from his MAGA loyalists, who are openly divided and questioning his decision to attack Iran, but also from the international community. Most of our once stalwart allies are giving Trump the cold shoulder.

France “will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. Canada “was not consulted prior to the offensive operation” and “has no intention of participating in it,” said Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised that his country would not be “drawn into the wider war.”

Rather than try to repair fissures with the world leaders, Trump did his damnedest to completely burn bridges.

“[W]e no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea,” the president added. “In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”, wrote the man who certainly needs help.

Even if the bombing stopped tomorrow, energy experts acknowledge it would take months to get online again. Energy production in the Middle East has shut down and you can’t just flip a switch and restart it. The Qatari facility bombed on Wednesday will take years to rebuild.

As The Economist noted, “Although president Donald Trump says he has ‘destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capability,’ the 0% that remains is playing havoc with the global economy.”

And if Iran keeps attacking oil infrastructure in the Gulf states, all bets are off. Iran said in a statement on Thursday that it will show “zero restraint” if its production facilities are attacked again.

And so the fog of war gets thicker and spreads wider. To what end, and when it ends remain a mystery, depending on the whims of one Donald Trump.

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Stay Steady,
Dan