The Straits and Iran

Just waiting for the economy to worsen as oil prices go up. Trump is making stuff up to tell others and relieve his fears. This is not a good situation for us to be in now. As New Deal democrat reports, it does not appear the economy has grown much since Trump took office. We shall see. Not good time to be attacking an oil country in the Middle East. They have the ability to worsen things by cutting off the straits.

March 11, 2026

Letters from an American

– by Heather Cox Richardson

In a brief call with Barak Ravid of Axios today, President Donald J. Trump said

“The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.” He added that the war against Iran will end “soon” because there’s “practically nothing left to target.” “Little this and that . . . Any time I want it to end, it will end,” he said.

In fact, according to Patrick Wintour of The Guardian, Iranian officials have rejected two messages from Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff calling for a ceasefire. Wintour writes that Iran’s leaders “sense it is not losing the war and the US president is at the minimum feeling the political pressure.” Iranian officials intend to make the economic, political, and military costs of the war so high that Trump will not attack Iran again.

For his part, Trump appears to be panicking over yesterday’s news that Iran is laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers transport about 20% of the world’s oil through a two-mile-wide (3.2 km) shipping channel. (Twenty percent of the world’s oil is about 20 million barrels, and a barrel is a unit of measure equal to 42 U.S. gallons or 159 liters.) Threats from Iran have bottled up oil in the Persian Gulf, and suppliers are shutting down operations because their storage facilities are full. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. has jumped nearly 60 cents a gallon since Trump launched attacks against Iran.

As Morgan Phillips of Fox News notes, naval mines are cheap, as little as a few thousand dollars, and can incapacitate or sink a $2 billion U.S. destroyer. They can be deployed by small vessels like hard-to-spot fishing craft at night.

The U.S. destroyed sixteen inactive Iranian mine-laying ships yesterday; today three merchant ships sustained minor damage after being struck in or near the strait. Today Trump claimed the U.S. has hit “28 mine ships as of this moment,” prompting Chris Cameron of the New York Times to note that “[t]he president sometimes exaggerates or is imprecise when giving figures.”

A spokesperson for Iran’s military command, Ebrahim Zolfaqari, said: “Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilised.” Today Iran struck oil storage facilities in Oman and Bahrain.

While a few Iranian ships are traversing the strait, they are the only ones. Retired French vice admiral Pascal Ausseur told the Associated Press: “In today’s context, sending warships or civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be suicidal,” adding that a ceasefire with Iran “would move the situation from suicidal to dangerous.” At that point, escorts of oil vessels by military ships could begin.

Today Trump told Leonardo Feldman of Newsweek that the project of reopening the Hormuz Strait is “working out very well, and I think you are going to see that.” Trump has said prices will “drop very rapidly when this is over,” but oil industry analysts say reopening production could take at least a month even if Trump could declare the war over immediately, and there is no indication Iran would agree to an instant ceasefire.

Aarian Marshall of Wired reports that half of the ships that usually travel through the Strait of Hormuz carry oil, but the other half carry raw materials that are made into fertilizer, plastics, precision instruments, machinery, electrical parts, and electronic components, all of which could jump in price.

Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press suggested that the war with Iran boils down to a single question: “Who can take the pain the longest?” Iran is being hammered with air strikes by both Israel and the U.S. Those strikes now include Israeli strikes on targets in Lebanon Israel says are connected to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, killing more than 600 people and turning as many as 800,000 into refugees. For the regime, Gambrell notes, victory means staying in power and outlasting the bombing.

It is unclear what victory looks like for the U.S. The administration has offered a range of justifications for its war without suggesting what an endgame looks like. David Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the U.S. and Israel appear to disagree about how long the war should last, with Israeli officials wanting to continue the war by decimating Iran’s oil industry and targeting top Iranian officials.

The pain for the U.S. is already becoming clear. Yesterday, after Reuters reporter Phil Stewart reported that as many as 150 U.S. troops had been wounded so far in the Iran conflict, the Pentagon publicly revised its estimate of fewer than a dozen U.S. service members wounded upward to about 140. The wounds include brain trauma, shrapnel wounds, and burns. Seven service members have died.

Lawmakers and their aides expressed frustration that the Pentagon had not announced the casualty numbers without prodding. “Just own it and be transparent,” a congressional aide told Alex Horton of the Washington Post. “You owe it to the service members.”

Bora Erden and Leanne Abraham of the New York Times reported today that at least seventeen U.S. military sites and installations across the region, including air defense systems, have been struck since the war began. Iran has also struck diplomatic sites, including U.S. embassies in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. consulate in Dubai.

The eye-watering cost of the conflict is also hitting home. Officials from the Pentagon told members of Congress this week that the military used up $5.6 billion worth of munitions in the first two days of the war, a much higher burn rate than the administration had previously disclosed. Lawmakers are concerned that Trump’s Iran attack, along with his strikes on Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq, Venezuela, the small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and the Houthis in Yemen, is cutting into U.S. readiness for unexpected conflicts.

Lawmakers are also unhappy about the administration’s expected upcoming request for more money to fight the war. Catie Edmondson of the New York Times reported that Pentagon officials told lawmakers yesterday the first six days of the war had cost more than $11.3 billion, not including the buildup of personnel and military hardware for the initial strikes.

Today Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, Malachy Browne, and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that, according to a preliminary report by military investigators, the U.S. is responsible for the February 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls elementary school that Iranian officials say killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The school building had been part of an adjacent Iranian military base years ago, and it appears the U.S. used outdated information in their targeting of the building.

As the journalists wrote, “Striking a school full of children is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades.”

On Saturday, when asked about the possibility the U.S. was responsible for the strike, Trump answered: “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran . . . We think it was done by Iran. Because they’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

On Monday, when a reporter noted that it was likely a Tomahawk missile that hit the school and asked if the U.S. would accept responsibility, Trump responded that “the Tomahawk . . . is sold and used by other countries,” and suggested that Iran “also has some Tomahawks.”

On Tuesday, a reporter asked why Trump said Iran had Tomahawks when only three other U.S. allies and the U.S. have them. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answered: “The president has a right to share his opinions with the American public, but he has said he’ll accept the conclusion of investigation, and frankly, we’re not going to be harassed by the New York Times, who’s been putting out a lot of articles on this making claims that have just not been verified by the Department of War, to quickly wrap up this investigation because the New York Times is calling on us to do so.”

Today a reporter confronted Trump, saying: “A new report says that the military investigation has found that the United States struck the school in Iran. As commander-in-chief, do you take responsibility for that?”

Trump answered: “I don’t know about it.”

Tonight, Iranian boats full of explosives hit two tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil and set them ablaze about 30 miles (48 kilometers) off the Iraqi coast. According to Iraqi state media, Iraqi oil ports have “completely stopped operations.” Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press reported that one of the key measures of oil prices, Brent crude, jumped above $100 a barrel.