Trump moving the US back to bombing Iran , which has Iran bombing other Gulf States IS causing some of those Gulf countries to reconsider their associations with America,,,,
Remember also?
Trump IS in this renewed ‘War’ by HIMSELF…..
America, in the form of President Trump?
Is doing THIS ALL by himself ….
American President’s have a knack forstrting Foreign Wars they have to abandon in the end….
“No one starts a war expecting it to last forever,” the New York Times reports.
“Yet, since Vietnam, American presidents have repeatedly gotten into conflicts that seem like they could last forever, at least until the next president — or the one after that — decides that the expense and political pain are not worth it, declares victory and goes home.”
“On Iran, President Trump may have fallen into the same trap.”
ISW…..Iran Update Special Report, July 16, 2026
- ran is trying to deter expanded US strikes by signaling that it could escalate against international shipping around the Bab al Mandeb, using the Houthis. It is unclear whether the Houthis would act on the Iranian threats, though the risk is very high.
- The United States has continued its effort to degrade the Iranian ability to attack commercial traffic around the Strait of Hormuz. The United States has also conducted strikes further inland, the purpose of which is unclear.
- The IRGC is trying to send FPV, fiber-optic drones to Lebanese Hezbollah. Such drones have posed a significant threat to Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. The drone hardware derives from Russia and China.
…
Meanwhile, Iran appears to have plentiful supplies of weaponry and continues to pummel US bases in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. The latest US administration estimate of the costs of the war, including damage to the bases, is put at $100bn.
When the memorandum was signed a month ago, Trump effectively admitted the military option had not achieved its purpose. If the strait remained closed for much longer there was a serious risk of a global recession, he said, telling CNBC that he did not want to be “a president with a depression on his resume”.
But now the advocates of war are back. Rob Malley, a former US nuclear negotiator, said: “On both sides, there are groups that believe they can bear the costs of escalating tensions and, more importantly, must prove this ability to the other side.”
US hawks still believe Iran will crumble if the reinstated blockade of its ports makes it impossible to export oil.
In Tehran, the chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been allowed to purge his biggest critics inside the parliament. But Ghalibaf is still under daily pressure to explain the purpose of negotiating with a counter party that treats solemn and binding agreements like passing street litter.
What is worse, Trump’s team cannot articulate a strategy for the strait. Joe Biden’s national security adviser Philip Gordon pointed out: “If the United States did not want Iran to take control of the strait, it should not have agreed to a document stating that ‘the Islamic Republic of Iran will make the necessary arrangements for the safe passage of ships’ or that ‘no fees will be charged for 60 days only’. Iran’s attacks on shipping are outrageous, but so was the US failure to clarify what it expected in exchange for the massive financial relief the MoU promised.”
In retrospect it would have made more sense for the US to leave Iran largely in control for 60 days, and insist Tehran get on with demining, rather than trying to speed the process of ships leaving the strait by opening up a new southern route close to the Oman coast.
The debate about the strait is becoming a wider one about security in the Gulf. Writing in Le Monde, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, the Oman foreign minister, argued that the whole premise of Washington’s Iran policy was flawed.
“The combination of excessive local defence spending, the expansion of US bases in the Gulf and an over-the-horizon protective presence was developed and maintained at great cost but to very little real purpose.
“The war has revealed that containment was a myth, a reality acknowledged now even by those who had previously been persuaded that more than 45 years of costly containment was a necessary evil. The gravest threats to the security of the Gulf come not from within the Gulf itself but from decisions and actions taken outside it, above all in Tel Aviv.”…..
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