Almost 40 years ago, one of the great buddy cop franchises was born. Lethal Weapon, starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, hit the screens for the first time. It made a whole bunch of money and spawned three sequels over the next dozen years.
In one early scene, Gibson's character, a L.A. cop going through an immense amount of personal and mental grief and trauma, is up on a roof with a potentially suicidal jumper. The conventional wisdom, of course, is to talk to him, keep talking, and wear him down by talking until he gives up and lets himself be taken away in a rubber truck. Gibson's Martin Riggs read the situation, improvised, and came up with a better and more expedient game plan.
That's pretty much what Donald Trump just did to the Iranian regime after ceasefire talks broke down in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Saturday. The regime elements, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf, went back home believing their strategy of holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage for $2 million dollars a ship for safe passage is a winner.
What is silly about that claim, obviously, is that while talks were ongoing, the United States Navy had traversed the Strait twice, deployed unmanned underwater drones seeking mines the regime claims they forgot where they dropped due to the fog of war, and began plotting a safe route of passage for oil tankers and cargo container ships.
But after the talks broke off, the ripples of which we'll cover in the course of this column, President Donald Trump, a proven master at the art of unpredictability, flipped the script 180 degrees on its head. He all but slapped the cuffs on, looked the Iranians in the eyes, and said, "Do you really want to close the Strait? Do you wanna? Okay. Let's close the Strait. Let's do it."
Before the air strikes by United States and Israeli forces began on February 28th, a little over a week before, in fact, Rich Goldberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies posted this on X while the world was speculating on when, or if, kinetic war was finally going to come to Iran.
It turns out that this option has moved up to take its rightful place at center stage.
For weeks leading up to the Caracas incursion by Delta Force and the Night Stalkers of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment on January 3rd, Donald Trump used our naval assets, forward staged in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere, to play pirate - interdicting and capturing oil tankers illegally exporting Venezuelan crude in violation of international sanctions.
By announcing the Strait is closed for real this time to Iranian-related commercial traffic, and the United States having an actual naval presence to enforce it, Kharg Island has become the loneliest Route 66 gas station after the interstate came to steer people away from it.
Iran already has no money. Their currency is far less valuable than the paper on which it is printed, and they have no meaningful access to the international banking system. Their economy is currently suffering 71% inflation due to the conflict. Now, it cannot export oil, which is 90% of the revenue, into the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it can no longer charge its fantasy toll on Larak Island for any other ship going through the hairpin curve.
So the question becomes, why now? Why didn't this happen weeks ago? As it turns out, in war, as in deal negotiations, timing is everything.
A couple of weeks ago, Saudi Arabia was spinning up their East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz entirely, to its capacity of 7 million barrels per day. It was estimated that it would take months, maybe years, to get to full capacity. The regime in Tehran was counting on that, actually, because that would give them more perceived leverage in the Strait.
Coinciding quite nicely with Donald Trump's announcement that the U.S. is now blockading Iranian-based traffic through the Strait, the pipeline has reached 100% oil flow. Either their workers were fibbing on how long it would take, or they're the busiest beavers in the Middle East.
And that's not the only workaround to traversing the Strait currently underway. The market self-corrects and creates alternatives out of necessity. Fanatical eschatological Iranian terrorists are that necessity. And part of that self-correction is numerous plans in the works to build and install more pipelines, some even through Israel, to the Mediterranean.
With Saudi Arabia's pipeline at peak performance, the pressure on opening the Strait lessens every day that the market is re-orienting itself for a post-Strait world. In short, the more the regimists in Tehran remain defiant, the more golden geese they're trying to hold for ransom are flying away in search of safer wetlands.
But if you have to give the regime anything, it's their defiance. They're positively Hakeem Jeffriesesque in their rhetoric. Chuck Schumer would love to be as bold as Ghalibaf and Araghchi have been of late. Here is a paraphrasing of the back and forth between the Trump administration and regime negotiators since the ceasefire went into effect.
Trump: "The Strait is open."In my nearly 60 years lapping around the Sun on this rock, I never thought I'd get to the point where virtually every geopolitical issue can be distilled into something I watched as a kid. I swear I've seen this bit before.
Regime: "The Strait is closed."
Trump: "It's open."
Regime: "It's closed unless you pay us."
Trump: "We just sent through two ships and swept for mines. It's open."
Regime: "Any ship that doesn't pay us will get hit. It's closed.">
Once the talks were over and Vice-President Vance boarded the plane home, President Trump pulled the Wabbit Season trick on the regime.
If Trump had blockaded the Strait a few weeks ago, the negative impact would have been felt by virtually the entire oil-producing Middle East, because the alternative means of delivery had not fully developed. Now, they have. 80% of the oil that used to flow through Hormuz has been accounted for via another route. The remainder of what would have to travel through the Strait to equal the net equivalent amount of oil flowing is around three tankers a day.
How did the regimists react to that news? Just like Daffy Duck...and American Democrats. They flipped on a dime.
It's really a brilliant strategy by President Trump if you think about it. Before this, Trump and the American military were in the position of proving a negative - that Iran wasn't a threat to maritime and commercial traffic through the Strait. We were pretty sure we carved out a safe lane, but thus far, there have not been too many takers, or tankers, because no one wants to be the first one to find out there's a mine that was missed or learn that an IRGC hiding behind a tree has a Stinger sitting on their shoulder.
Instead, the President has closed Hormuz to Iranian-centric traffic and dared the Iranians to demonstrate they have the naval or military capacity to take us on and clear a path for their Chinese and Indian patrons. If they do attempt to fire on a destroyer or, God forbid, make a run at one of the aircraft carriers we have deployed in the Gulf region, that might just be the last thing the Iranian regime does.
If they can't make a lane for tankers to get to and from their oil docks and ports, or worse for them, loaded tankers get interdicted by the Americans and Iran loses both the oil and the revenue from it, then the rest of the world, including the skippers of those tankers on either side of the Strait waiting for a green light, will know once and for all that Iran is all talk, no walk. In short, Iran is now in the position of proving the negative - that they have a functional navy or air force when they don't.
Suddenly, the Democratic-inspired Daffians from the regime now see throttling ship traffic, their ship traffic, as violating the ceasefire. What a difference a day makes. But seriously, let's consider the proposition of the Iranian regime - that they will handle this firmly. With what? Their entire naval fleet is reef lattice at the bottom of the Strait, their senior naval leadership commanders and advisors dead, now replaced with underlings with little or no experience or expertise. What does Iran have that's going to be deployed as a counter to four aircraft carrier groups, aided and assisted by a growingly capable and increasingly pissed off coalition of Sunni Arab countries? The Late Charles Krauthammer's proverbial strong letter to follow?
If the Iranians truly do violate the ceasefire by launching anything at American ships or non-Iranian-approved commercial shipping, Trump has a smorgasbord of weaponry at his disposal to essentially time-travel the regime back a few geological eras.
The biggest concern, of course, is not what Iran can or might do. We'll get to their latest hope for salvation - the Houthis - in a bit. But the biggest geopolitical concern facing the Americans after shutting down the Strait to Iran is who actually gets screwed the most - the People's Republic of China.
The Secretary-General of the Communist Chinese Party, Xi Jinping, was reportedly instrumental in forcing the regime to enter into the ceasefire in the first place, something Saturday's failed talks demonstrated was a choice not entirely of their own making. How will the CCP react to the blockade of their tankers in the Gulf? Perhaps it wouldn't have come to this if Secretary-General Xi Jinping hadn't pulled a Swalwell move.
Part of what may have obviously entered Donald Trump's decision-making was this report that China was going to airlift in supplies to Iran. Not food, medicine, or things the civilian populace needs, mind you, but new air defense systems to install.
That was a very bad miscalculation on the CCP's part. This was how Trump reacted to that threat.
That would be crippling to China's economy. As it is, they're scrambling just to get oil, affecting their economy just as much as the previous tariffs they were handed by Donald Trump at the beginning of 2025. Before the campaign in Iran began, China imported somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from Iran, primarily out of Kharg Island. It has reduced dramatically over the last six weeks, but going to zero as of 10:00 AM EDT Monday morning is going to be crushing.
So does that mean they're going to send those brand-new, yet untested warships of their own to the Gulf to take on the Americans and force their will on the Strait? Not bloody likely. They have petroleum reserves of their own they can tap, but not enough to sustain that kind of military adventurism for any significant period of time. And they've had a pretty good glimpse for six weeks of what they'd be up against. I'm not sure they're willing to tag team into the ring.
Could they choose now to enforce a blockade through the Strait of Taiwan in order to distract and pressure Donald Trump? Sure. They face the same problem, though. They would need to expend a tremendous amount of energy to do so, and Taiwan will have something to say about it. And undoubtedly, Taiwan has much more military might than what we've seen of the Iranians.
China is a net importer of oil. We have plenty. And now that Venezuela is on board with the United States, they've got vast amounts available as well that have been largely closed off to the CCP.
China now has to shop for oil in the same stores as the rest of the world, and they're going to have to pay close to retail for it now.
Second look at the Gulf of America?
With oil in the mid-$90's per barrel, each one of those dots is worth about $210 million dollars fully loaded. Care to take a guess who's nuzzling up to the trough in the Gulf of America again? China.
Before the war broke out in the Gulf, China and the United States' trade relationship had cooled significantly. Tariffs will tend to do that. But specifically regarding oil imports, China, which historically had imported somewhere around 225,000 barrels per day from the U.S. before Trump, dropped that number down to essentially zero since early 2025.
The current environment in the Strait of Hormuz has changed that. This month, the CCP is on tap to import 600,000 barrels per day. That's a pretty big hike from zero. As I said, they're a net importer, and they have a billion-plus people. Their thirst for oil cannot be sated. If they can't get it from Iran or Venezuela, they're realizing we are the world's emergency gas station.
Still think China is willing to militarily intervene when Donald Trump can cut them off from Iran's oil, but Venezuela's, ours, and probably our allies in the Sunni Arab world as well? My guess is that one of the reasons Trump is instituting this blockade, one out of many, is that this squeezes Xi to the point where he gets more forceful with his Iranian friends to cave once and for all. When Trump says he's holding all the cards, he is. But more importantly, he's holding all the pressure points around the globe and is pressing on them as necessary to get what he wants.
And what does Donald Trump want? Everything.
Iran is stating they're willing to fight this war with the Americans and Israelis down to the very last...Houthi?
So just to understand the Iranian regime logic, the Strait is closed, unless a fee is paid, but now it's open to everyone else but them, and their response is we'll reopen this strait by force, and our buddies in Yemen, the Houthis, will close down the other strait, Bab el-Mandeb. How much do you think the Israelis are licking their chops at the prospects of destroying the Houthis if they fall for this? That's another score that needs settling. Perhaps that time is coming soon if the Houthis are dumb enough to become cannon fodder for a regime that can never help them again.
As for the Iranian regime, you might think that due to the over-the-top bluster they're issuing as though they're winning this conflict, which by any objective measure they aren't, they have plenty of turmoil internally - lots of it.
That's basically the Iranian regime power struggle in one tweet - the politicians are trying to browbeat the Americans into the best settlement they can achieve and still survive the conflict, while the hard-liners in the IRGC are not having any of it, and don't trust the politicians as far as they can throw them off buildings.
So why go through the motions of this flurry of marathon negotiations in Islamabad on Saturday? Why send J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner against 71 Iranians, or one virgin short of a full martyr's Paradise complement? Several reasons, actually.
Of anyone in the Trump administration who is part of the national security team, J.D. Vance is probably the most dovish. He doesn't like this conflict with Iran very much at all, especially with one eye looking forward to the 2028 presidential election. If there is anyone in the administration willing to work tirelessly to get some concession, any concession, out of the Iranians in order to end the conflict and declare victory, it would be V.P. Vance.
The fact that the Iranians got their hindquarters handed to them for six weeks, unfortunately, was not enough motivation to get them to yes at the table. This frees up the much more hawkish Donald Trump to use whatever force he deems appropriate to escalate if Iran so much as twitches in the direction of our naval blockade or our allies in the Middle East re-route the oil milkshake straw away from Hormuz forever. Does Trump still want a deal? Maybe, but maybe not. He doesn't seem to care at this point.
The Strait of Hormuz will open. It may be a while before courage spreads like a virus among tanker captains, but again, only a few have to make it for the market's oil demands to be met. Does Trump need a deal right now? No. The economic chokehold on Iran will continue to tighten like a boa constrictor until the life of the regime is extinguished. If Iranian citizens decide 100% inflation sucks and walking everywhere sucks more, the regime will have more on their plate than it can handle. Maybe the next time someone from the regime calls to negotiate, the overture will begin with an image texted of a white flag flying over Tehran.
Two, the oil export bonanza that is coming to the United States, literally and figuratively, should deliver an absolutely amazing 2nd quarter GDP print. I don't presume to be able to tell you what it will end up being, but that many dots leaving $210 million behind in the United States as they leave the Gulf of America with boatloads of Uncle Sam crude, that should do wonders for the U.S. economy. The failed talks showed that the Iranians aren't reasonable, have never been reasonable, nor will they be for the foreseeable future.
Now that the Gulf of America is poised to do standing-boat-only business very soon, there is an island that naturally creates a minor chokepoint. And for a very long time, that island has been very unfriendly to the United States. If you ever wanted to know why Cuba mattered, look at how much hostage money sailing above and below the despotic regime is about to take place. Cuba has historically had no qualms about using economic terrorism in order to survive. When Donald Trump says Cuba is next, it would seem to me that next should be moved up to now. The boom that is coming to the United States is very large and very real, and the last thing we need is for Cuba to perform as an Iranian regime understudy.
On a tarmac before boarding Air Force One Sunday night back to Washington, President Trump was asked about the coming blockade of Iranian sea traffic.
I'll close by answering the question of how China will react to being shut off from Iranian oil. Very late last night, this news dropped.
Qatar is on the south shore of the Persian Gulf. It looks like the CCP is already recalculating. Instead of messing with the American blockade of Iran, they're negotiating a deal with Qatar to fill up the boats there and use the American Navy as the crossing guard through the Strait of Hormuz, leaving Iran holding their Swalwell in their hands.
Now tell me again how Trump is losing this war to Iran?
