War’s Unintended Consequences Are Sinking Trump

Donald Trump’s dream of neutralizing Iran with overwhelming firepower and quickly coming home to a hero’s welcoming is turning into his nightmare.

Unintended consequences will do that, and they are doing it. Big time. What Trump said would be a short and surgical war with Iran appears to be a fantasy now. The fact that 5,000 Marines and sailors, and a Navy amphibious ship, are en route to Iran indicates that American boots on the ground are coming soon, and a ground invasion would add to the time it will take to end this thing.

Trump’s problem is that Iran is not tucking its tail between its legs and surrendering, as he plainly thought it would. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, used his first post-attack address to the nation to promise that Iran would avenge “the blood of your martyrs,” and he began doing so by blocking traffic from transiting the Strait of Hormuz. One-fifth of the world’s oil passes through that strait, causing oil and gasoline prices to skyrocket almost everywhere. It had driven the world’s oil prices up 40% by the weekend, and gasoline prices across America were up more than 17%.

Perhaps even more important, though, 33% of the world’s fertilizer also passes through the strait, which could lead to skyrocketing food prices and even a worldwide food shortage because Gulf fertilizers contain some key ingredients that are not available from anywhere else.

Although Trump says the strait is not blocked and ships can go through it any time, that is not true. Iran has kept the strait closed for more than two weeks, making it the largest disruption of global oil tanker trade in history. And it could continue. At its narrowest, the strait is only 21 miles wide, which allows small Iranian boats to dart out, plant mines, and dart back in. American firepower has sunk some of those boats, but who knows how many others accomplished their mission? Or will? American minesweepers could clear any mines, of course, but authorities say that could take weeks.

But again, the strait’s closing is not the war’s only unintended consequence. For one, the reverberations of Trump’s illegal war reached America’s shores on Thursday in three separate attacks. First, a man, Ayman Mohamad Ghalazi, drove a truck into Detroit’s Temple Israel synagogue, one of the largest Reform congregations in the United States. Then a terror suspect, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, entered a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) class at Old Dominion University and killed an instructor before students subdued and killed Jalloh. And, finally, a hacker group linked to Iran infiltrated the computer systems of a U.S.-based medical company, claiming their attack was in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of an Iranian girls’ school that killed 175 people, including 108 children.

The FBI is investigating all three attacks as terrorism, and it says we should expect more attacks, perhaps many more, on U.S. soil.

But the fallout also is rattling households and businesses all over the world with unintended and unexpected consequences. In Western India, gas-fired crematories are closing because of a gas shortage. In Vietnam, gas stations are closing because they have run out of gas and expect none. In Pakistan, which gets all its oil from tankers that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, desperation is setting in. In Kenya, tea growers and traders worry that their exports to Iran will rot on the dock. And across the United States, Canada, Europe, Britain and Mexico, farmers are blanching at the surge in fertilizer costs and the shrinking stocks of specialized fertilizer.

Not every nation is hurting, though. Trump’s war is giving Russia, which helps Iran target U.S. troops, a huge financial boost. In an effort to tame surging oil prices, Trump lifted sanctions on Russia’s oil that the United States imposed on it in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia now can sell oil to anyone in the world, and experts say that as a result it is raking in about $150 million a day in oil sales. The lifting of sanctions is supposed to last 30 days but of course could be extended.

And although China expects the war will cause it some short-term damage, it could become a major boon in the long term. It could boost Beijing’s efforts to position itself as a global counterbalance to the United States, shoring up its influence across Asia and the world.

China’s relations with Western countries such as Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom were already warming. Those countries were openly expressing concern over the reliability of the United States as a partner and they were – and they still are — looking to boost economic ties with China.

Middle East countries that Iran is attacking might recoil at the consequences of aligning with Washington and turn to China.

And traditional U.S. allies in Asia such as Japan and South Korea might question whether the alliance system in the region that has long been maintained by Washington can guarantee their security.

Further, a long entanglement in Iran also would drain American resources that might otherwise reinforce U.S. deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, creating an opportunity for China to cement its role as the dominant regional player in Asia.

The war in Iran also is fertile ground for China to study American and Israeli weaponry, which could inform its future military strategy. The demonstration of the military value of drones in Ukraine, for example, has been key in China’s decision to develop and test new types of drones and drone swarm technologies.

Trump is even having trouble with his partner in this war, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump says America’s military goal of ending Iran’s regime is nearly complete (even though the ayatollahs remain in power) but Netanyahu wants to end Iran’s regime and its regional influence.

And let us not forget the growing number of American casualties the war has caused.
At least 11 American servicemen have died so far, but that number could quickly multiply if Marines storm ashore.

Also let us not forget that the war has killed at least 1,230 Iranians, and perhaps as many as 4,000, including those 108 schoolgirls killed in the war’s first day. Ten Israeli civilians have been killed.

And atop all that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States “will keep pressing, we will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

No quarter?! No quarter is the refusal to take prisoners and instead just execute everyone, and it has been considered a war crime for more than a century. Former government war crimes lawyer Brian Finucane says that “even the declaration of no quarter is a war crime” and it is “recognized as such by the U.S. government.” Hegseth should be arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned.

Even venture capitalist David Sacks, who is Trump’s AI and crypto czar, warned of potentially catastrophic consequences if the U.S.-Israel war on Iran continues. He said Friday that a tit-for-tat escalation spiral in Iran could see both sides targeting each other’s oil and gas infrastructure, which would mean that reopening the Strait of Hormuz would not matter because restarting oil and gas production would be impossible.

Even worse, he said, some desalinization plants that provide most of the region’s fresh water have already been targeted, and if many more are destroyed it could render the Gulf virtually uninhabitable.

“I mean you’re not going to have enough water for 100 million people, and human beings just cannot survive very long without water,” he said. “So that would be a truly catastrophic scenario, and we’re talking about destroying the Gulf states economically and then also from a humanitarian perspective.”

Despite Trump’s bluster, all this is weakening him in the eyes of the American public. Polls and statehouse elections across the nation are in lockstep showing his popularity shrinking with every passing day. Democrats have flipped 28 statehouse seats since Trump took the White House, and Republicans have not even flipped one.

We the People can help accelerate that trend to dispose ourselves of Trump. Let your senators and House members know what you think. Their phone number is 202-224-3121.

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