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A more sanewashed idea than Elder Gods:
Closing the Strait hurts America's allies more than it hurts Americans. If we look like we're not doing much about it, the allies are incentivized to build up their navies again and protect their own damn shipping lanes. Anything that makes Europe/Australia look at the world through more realistic lenses than some rose-colored End of History glasses is a win for sanity everywhere.
As an European, I think it is unlikely that we would revert to Prussian militarism once our energy supply is threatened. I think it is much more likely that we would try to cut a deal with Iran. That would work much faster than building up a navy or paying the Saudis to build more pipelines.
It helps that the situation we find ourselves in is not Iran's fault. Iran did not look at its bank balance and decide to do some shakedown of the international community. Instead, they were subjected to a US-Israeli bombing campaign. Closing the strait is the one way they can hurt the US. So of course they would do it. The Ayatollah regime certainly did enough evil, but closing the strait is something every polity would have done if the alternative was just to allow the enemy to bomb you at leisure.
Europe paying them for safe passage is win-win-win. The gulf states get to sell their fuels. Europe gets its dirty energy fix. Iran gets funds with which it can frustrate the interests of the US and Israel in lieu of crashing the market.
Sure, some might claim it would be immoral to pay Iran when it might funnel that money to Hamas, but I can assure you that we have decades of practice of not watching too closely what our oil money funds. If a polity ruled by religious crazies wants to use our money to kill the citizens of other polities ruled by religious crazies, that is by now a long-running tradition in the ME, and far be it from Europe to try to impose our value systems on Iran or the ME.
You understand Americans largely aren't actually hurt by this. Australia is hurt by this. Asia is hurt by this. Europe is hurt by this. America in general benefits because our oil supply mostly isn't impacted and now we have higher profits on what we export.
I wouldn't say it's immoral to pay Iran, go ahead, be our guest. But if it were that simple, why hasn't it happened yet?
My understanding is that unlike the gulf states, where oil is the main export, for the US oil is more of a side hustle (on the order of 10% of the total exports or so). A higher oil price will tank the world economy, and that will hurt US exports in other areas far more than their increased revenue from selling oil.
There is a reason that the US has been very active in the ME for longer than I have been alive, and charitably it comes down to the US faring worse if the oil price skyrockets. There is also the fact that the global oil trade is mostly conducted in dollars, which enables the US deficit as countries stockpile US currency.
If the US decides that they have their own oil and don't care about the global market, before long oil will be traded in yuan.
I will grant you though that a high oil price will hurt other Western countries more than it hurts the US, but then again it does not take a lot of economic hurt to lose an election.
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It's never 4D chess. Events just aren't predictable enough for that kind of strategy to work. If you can pull off a simple misdirection, you are doing well.
Deliberately inflicting pain on your allies isn't a clever move, it's a great way to stop having allies. If there was a buried intention here (there isn't, because it's never 4D chess, especially with Trump et al), it's that someone in the administration skimmed The Accidental Superpower and decided to become a Zeihanist accelerationist.
All I said is it's more Sanewashed than Elder Gods, which isn't a very high bar. But I'm not saying this was predicted before Iran was bombed, but rather that of the options available to them now, they might be choosing to leave the Strait risky because it has created some responses that the administration thinks are useful at the time.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2034311772354592874.html discusses it a bit.
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Can you see Trump signing on to a strategy like that? Looking ineffective/losing to encourage others to step up? Because I can’t. It’s completely against his brand.
I find it much more likely that he gambled on an in-and-out, five-day adventure. Blow up their assets, decapitate the leadership, get an easy peace deal. Foot in the door.
I agree that this was likely the hope, but knowing at least some of the players I find it difficult to believe that the current situation where in the regime has not collapsed wasn't "gamed out".
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JD Vance would sign up for embarrassing Europe.
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