Iran re-closed the Strait of Hormuz Friday instead of heading to Switzerland for nuclear negotiations, citing Israel’s refusal to pull forces out of southern Lebanon and US forces’ ongoing presence in the region.
In a statement read over maritime radio channels, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the US was in violation of the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran, which President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed Wednesday.
“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met,” it said. “All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”
He doesn’t need a war to commit insider trading or to receive offshore payments from industries… He’s been doing that the whole time. There are only a few business sectors profiting from the war and he already had those in his pocket. This war is extremely damaging to the vast majority of the economy, and keeping the economy going is the only way he maintains power while in the office.
You are giving him a lot more credit than he deserves, and feeding the idea that he’s some sort of Machiavellian character, when in reality he’s just an oaf scrambling from one scheme to another.
Because the executive branch has been given more and more power for the last 4 decades, to the point where they are nearly untouchable. Do you think that the likes of Ronald Regan or George Bush were also secret geniuses? Coupled with the fact that the billionaire class has become an American aristocracy, it’s easy to see how idiots sustain themselves through scandal after scandal.
No, but the absolutely insane and perfectly predictable swings in market prices, over and over and over, each one capable of eating hundreds of billions of dollars, can’t be done as easily any other way. Those are very specific asks. He already did all the “low level” hundreds of millions stuff. This is bigger.
It’s also not only about the money.
This is where you are way off. His goal is enrichment. The people who put him there have the goal of destruction of the American government. This achieves both.
He specifically maintains power by destroying the ability of the American system to function. That’s what his cronies want. Eventually he will obliterate the economy too.
He has been destroying the foundations so that when the final blow lands, it’s a KO. Again this is not his plan, this is the plan he agreed to, thought up by actually smart groups of people, who needed his one-domain skills to help them enact it.
No, I’m not. You are. I am and always have been claiming that he is an excellent con man. He is a goddamn idiot savant. If I say “that guy is a really good football player” no one assumes I’m calling him a multi-domain genius. But somehow every time I point to trump’s very obvious history of successful cons, and the fact that he’s doing the exact same, beat for beat thing he always does, the One Fucking Thing he is good at, in the entirety of his life, One Thing, everyone builds a strawman of me calling him a genius. So they can tear it down.
Many idiots are really really insanely good at one thing. It happens. It’s a normal part of the human condition.
Yes! Yesyeshesyeayeayeas! This! A million times this! And he’s a god tier “oaf scrambler”, and only this!
No, but there are groups of aristocratic funded geniuses who have been guiding the process you have correctly identified occuring over many presidents, congressmen, senators, governors, etc.