{"id":2083,"date":"2026-08-08T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2026-08-08T17:12:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T17:12:00","slug":"trump-and-hegseth-are-the-bros-of-the-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=2083","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Hegseth Are the Bros of the Iran War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Trump<\/div>

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\n\tBack in early March at an Exxon in northern Virginia, a man at the pump beside me looks over as we wait for our tanks to fill. He gives me a cautious nod.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoy. High gas prices, huh?\u201d he says, conversationally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYup,\u201d I offer in return.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell, it\u2019ll go back down now that the war\u2019s over, right?\u201d he says. Earlier in the day, the president told<\/a> CBS News that the Iran war<\/a> \u201cis very complete, pretty much,\u201d and news organizations are running with the comment in their headlines.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you say so,\u201d I reply, keeping my voice neutral.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou don\u2019t think so, huh?\u201d This time he answers with a wry smile, as if encouraging me to take a stand: Plant your flag! Declare your tribe! Whose side are you on?<\/p>\n

\n\tI give my best Gallic shrug, well past the requisite amount of life experience required to see the downsides of engaging in a politically charged debate with a stranger at a gas station.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exit strategy for unwanted conversation is simple: Disengage and depart.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exit strategy for unwanted conflicts is the same. Ask Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyways. The stranger and I both paid $3.59 a gallon for regular that day at the pump, according to my receipt. Gas at that same Exxon is now $4.09 a gallon.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m not, of course, psychic. I was speaking regularly to regional experts, commodities traders, and a variety of other sources. None of them thought this thing was anywhere close to being resolved. None of them think so today, either.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the five months since that random encounter, we\u2019ve been reliably informed dozens of times that the war has ended.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery week or so, President Donald J. Trump pretends<\/a> he\u2019s once again found a way to end the Iran war with an American victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery week or so when the war ends, Trump\u2019s Cabinet members gather around him and smile at the cameras. The chief executive of the world\u2019s most powerful country then closes his eyes to reveal the reverse-racoon of a spray-tanned face, which bobs gently heavenward as he slips into the fairyland of dreams.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tEvery week or so when the war ends, legions of pseudonymous social media accounts praise the president\u2019s genius in starting the war, the raw courage it took to defeat this foe \u2014 who, if left unchecked, would most assuredly be dropping nukes on the Great Satan, obliterating its people and its freedom and its Chick-fil-As. Iran is very evil, they say, and if you don\u2019t agree America has utterly defeated it, then you must like evil.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery week or so when the war ends, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth<\/a> yells at an assemblage of reporters, berating them for insufficiently loving the troops, because they ask questions about what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

\n\tQuestions such as, \u201cWhy are there insufficient air- and missile-defenses at U.S. facilities in the region?\u201d or, \u201cHow many<\/a> troops have been killed or wounded so far?\u201d or, \u201cWhy are American servicemembers dying in a war the president says we\u2019ve already won?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat last one causes the brains of administration-friendly talking heads to short-circuit, a logic error frying their motherboards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t understand how it is possible that Iran still has the capabilities to fight this way\u2026 because the U.S. has obliterated Iran\u2019s military, and the president continues to reiterate that,\u201d says Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News on a recent Sunday show, the confusion and pain evident on her face as she tries to square MAGA reality with actual reality.<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, Ms. Bartiromo, there\u2019s a pretty simple explanation here\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of lies, America\u2019s latest plan to end the war is actually being worked out by Oman. The early drafts appear to say Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> \u2014 but that Oman, too, will get a cut of transit tolls to guarantee the safety of shipping that flows through the waterway. Huh. Guess that\u2019s a win \u2014 right?<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, for many years \u2014 something like a couple of centuries \u2014 the idea that a regional hegemon could close down an international maritime thoroughfare and charge tolls for through-passage was anathema to\u2026 well, the foundational concepts of international trade and maritime law, as well as the global order that the United States helped build in the wake of the Second World War.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s because during that time, if you tried to control an international sea lane, The World\u2019s Most Powerful Navy\u2122\u00a0 \u2014 a title the U.S. Navy inherited from Britain\u2019s Royal Navy sometime around 1922 \u2014 would show up off your shore. And they wouldn\u2019t be smiling.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to the war with Iran, this principle held firm. No one had to pay to use the Strait of Hormuz, because neither Iran nor anyone else wanted to have a full-on war about the matter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell,\u201d the leaders in Tehran figured, \u201csince we already have a full-on war, why not start charging tolls?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s what they did. And the World\u2019s Most Powerful Navy\u2122 showed up as promised. I mean, they were already there \u2014 but now they are there even more so.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, it happens that most naval officers have long memories when it comes to events like \u201cthat time our ship nearly got sunk,\u201d and as a result the U.S. Navy learned some important lessons the last time they had to do this exact same thing, in this exact same place, about 40 years ago, in what was then called The Tanker War.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the Navy learned is that it\u2019s dangerous to guarantee \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d in a narrow waterway when an active war bleeds over into international shipping lanes. Back in the 1980s when the U.S. ordered its captains to escort oil tankers because of this, a bunch of Navy ships hit mines, dozens of sailors died, and an American cruiser shot down an Iranian airliner and killed a lot of civilians. It was all a horrific mess, to be perfectly honest.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, it didn\u2019t work. It\u2019s hard to convince merchant ship captains and insurers that it\u2019s safe to transit a choke point, when ships are being blown up there. The Tanker War only ended in 1988 because the Iran-Iraq War itself ended.<\/p>\n

\n\tAh, but that was 40 years ago, and back then, the problem was mostly sea mines. What relevance does this experience have now, amid a proliferation of long-range precision munitions, such as anti-ship-, cruise-, and ballistic-missiles, or cheap one-way attack drones?<\/p>\n

\n\tHegseth assures us that Iran doesn\u2019t \u201ccontrol\u201d anything, touting the success of a desultory on-again, off-again effort to convince commercial ships to run the strait under American protection, dubbed Project Freedom.<\/p>\n

\n\tLloyd\u2019s List <\/em>dismisses Project Freedom as a meaningless gesture that does nothing to convince shipping firms the strait is safe to navigate, probably because the world\u2019s oldest shipping trade publication is a bastion of wokeism, or hates freedom\u2026 or something.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cProject Freedom never stopped, and we\u2019ve run 125 million barrels of oil through the strait and Iran couldn\u2019t do anything about it. How many ships from Iran have transited our blockade? Zero,\u201d Hegseth told CBS News, on Face the Nation<\/em>. \u201cWe have controlled the strait this entire time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOK, look. Anyone who\u2019s studied the past 60-odd years of American foreign policy will take it for granted that the country\u2019s national security establishment rarely produces strategic geniuses. It\u2019s hard to even be mad that Hegseth obviously doesn\u2019t understand what \u201ccontrol\u201d means when it comes to sea lanes \u2014 that the entire dilemma is that commercial traffic through the strait is reduced to a fraction by the mere threat of attack.<\/p>\n

\n\tHegseth thinks that if a few destroyers can run the strait, or Marines can board random tankers, that it means America is winning. He\u2019s a former National Guard infantry officer. Ignorance of naval strategy is to be expected.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf he were to seek to fill in some gaps in his understanding, he might read Sir Julian Corbett\u2019s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy<\/em>, to learn that the entire point of a navy is \u201ccontrol of maritime communications, whether for commercial or military purposes,\u201d and that a strategy of \u201csea denial\u201d by threatening sea lanes to choke off commerce is a predictable asymmetric response by a weaker maritime power.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr \u2014\u00a0since MAGA bros seem to have a bit of a complex about Europeans (yes, even Brits) \u2014 he could pick up an American book, Alfred Thayer Mahan\u2019s The Influence of Sea Power upon History<\/em>. In it, he would hear the argument that technology is secondary to geography, that control of sea lanes \u2014 \u201cthe great common\u201d upon which commerce moves \u2014 is vital, and that the core principles of maritime strategy never change.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr if he wants something more recent, he might consult Bernard Brodie, who warns in his Guide to Naval Strategy<\/em> that although the goal of one\u2019s maritime strategy should be simple \u2014 \u201cto secure the passage of the sea to friends, and deny it to enemies\u201d \u2014 rapid advances in technology can upend naval tactics overnight.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe secretary likely has other things to concern himself with than books, however \u2014 such as worrying about whether<\/a> the troops are manly men, or Low-T losers.<\/p>\n

\n\tHegseth used his top brass to convince the president that the Venezuela raid proved American military manhood could rise to any challenge. It\u2019s hardly surprising that a clique of brainwashed Crossfit fools would mistake counting a leader\u2019s deadlift reps for the importance of counting on him to evaluate the strategic consequences of military action.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll the raid in Venezuela proved was that if you have the world\u2019s most highly trained, expensively maintained military, you can snatch the foreign leader of a relatively dysfunctional country from their bed in the middle of the night and put them on a one-way cruise to Brooklyn \u2014 while hardly changing a single political reality on the ground.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs ever with America\u2019s military adventurism, tactical brilliance gives way to strategic idiocy.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps it\u2019s too much to expect a defense secretary with Hegseth\u2019s background to be immersed in naval strategy, but surely someone in Trump\u2019s Pentagon has read Carl von Clausewitz. Wouldn\u2019t a Prussian land-army officer be acceptable to even the most anti-woke of modern crusaders?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe political object of war can be of two kinds: Either to totally destroy the adversary, to eliminate his existence as a state, or else to prescribe peace terms to him,\u201d Clausewitz writes.<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did his best to convince Trump that the first of these \u2014 total destruction of Iran\u2019s regime \u2014 should be the goal. He failed, and there\u2019s no sign the regime is falling any time soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump and his officials now say that the point of all the bombing is to re-open the strait. This, too, is strategic folly. Re-opening the strait cannot be accomplished militarily. That battle will be won with conference calls, not with cruise missiles: it requires diplomacy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCommand of the sea is only a means to an end,\u201d Corbett writes. \u201cIt never has been, and never can be, the end itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich returns us to Clausewitz\u2019s principle that war must have a political goal, and that there are only two end states that make sense: peace, or annihilation. When a country seeks neither of these, Clausewitz argues, then its policy has ceased to be rational and its war will become a monstrosity of ceaseless violence, a \u201csenseless thing without an object.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tWell, OK, sure. That\u2019s his opinion. But what does the author of On War<\/em> know about war?<\/p>\n

\n\tDid Clausewitz even lift, bro?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in early March at an Exxon in northern Virginia, a man at the pump beside me looks over as we wait for our tanks to fill. He gives me a cautious nod. \u201cBoy. High gas prices, huh?\u201d he says, conversationally. \u201cYup,\u201d I offer in return. \u201cWell, it\u2019ll go back down now that the war\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mac-bishop-strait-of-hormuz.jpg?w=1600&h=900&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[3872,2064,126,289,1556],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-bros","tag-hegseth","tag-iran","tag-trump","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}