Left With Nothing But Gimmicks, Trump Gets Bluff Called Again By Confident Iran
As the Iranian talks collapsed, Trump again issued a series of major threats about wiping out all Iranian power plants and the like:
We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years.
IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!
President DONALD J. TRUMP
In response, Iranian leaders laughed in the blowhard’s face.
Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf’s advisor wrote that the losing side cannot dictate the terms:
The disorganized ‘dance’ this time was an even bigger fiasco than usual—Trump had claimed his “negotiators” were traveling to Islamabad for talks with Iran, while Iran denied even going there. Then news broke that Rubio and co. in fact stayed home and Iran was right: it had never agreed to any talks because its demands have not yet been met—primarily lifting the blockade.
Trump then expectorated an even more unhinged series of ravings, which made little sense. After threatening to blow up the country and kill all Iran’s leaders, Trump suddenly “extended the ceasefire indefinitely”, despite Iran stating they did not even request such an extension and are ready for full resumption of hostilities:
What a gag. Talk about having no cards!
He followed up with this brain-busting entry—most people, at this point, no longer even have the patience nor interest to decipher such jejune gimmickry:
He seems to be inanely implying that Iran only claims the Strait is closed because the US blockaded it. But in fact, the order of events is in reverse: Iran had closed the Strait first, which forced Donny Gimmicks to pretend to “blockade” it to save face, given that the spent and ineffective US military no longer had any cards left to play, particularly after its broken-down carrier groups had shamefully fled the theater. Now they hover outside the Gulf of Oman, seizing Iranian ships as far away as India as a cringe-inducing “show of force”.
Say it ain’t so.
In fact, CNN confirms the humiliating truth we knew all along: Trump was essentially begging the Iranians for negotiations and received “radio silence” from them; this is what spurred him to “extend the ceasefire” out of desperation and a lack of options (i.e. no cards):
His ceasefire deadline was nearing its end, and Air Force Two was sitting on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews ahead of Vice President JD Vance’s scheduled departure to Pakistan for the next round of talks. But the administration was dealing with a conundrum: virtual silence from the Iranians.
In the days prior, the US had sent Iran a list of broad deal points that they wanted the Iranians to agree to in advance of the next round of talks. But days had gone by without the US getting a response…
It’s quite simple: Trump’s bluff was called by the Iranians.
He threatened to destroy their country, they replied: “Come try.”
And that’s all she wrote.
Of course, many still believe the US is gearing up for a major escalation, but Trump knows he has little leverage and more aimless bombing of an increasingly entrenched IRGC structure is not going to accomplish anything. Hitting power plants will only invite a likewise response onto a Gulf region facing crippling economic damage. News continues to pour out that UAE in particular has been hard hit, with its economy allegedly nearing the brink, which is why it’s now begging the US for a lifeline.
But so as not to be accused of one-sidedness by Trump loyalists, let us briefly explore the counter hypothesis suggested by some, that Trump’s plan is in fact “genius” and Iran is the one losing out by this blockade—summarized here:
Maybe the above would be true if the blockade was that effective, but many sources have claimed that dozens of Iranian ships have long passed the blockade, here from Financial Times:
At least 34 tankers with links to Iran have bypassed the US blockade since it began, according to the cargo tracking group Vortexa, including several carrying Iranian oil — despite US President Donald Trump declaring the barricade a “tremendous success”.
The article states the US nabbed one ship near the Gulf of Oman, the other in the Indo-Pacific area, as shown earlier—but 19 others have successfully broken the blockade by exiting the Gulf, with 15 others entering the Gulf going the opposite way towards Iran after transiting the Arabian Sea.
Again, we go back to the idea that it’s never black or white, with one side totally dominating while suffering no losses. Sure, Iran could take major economic losses soon once the Kharg Island oil shipments fill up and are theoretically unable to leave—though the fact that many ships are successfully breaking the blockade appears to nullify this possibility. But as implied before, the US cannot simply sit at the Strait’s gates with no economic blowback of its own.
To play devil’s advocate:
Not only are major strains growing between US and its Gulf allies—most notably now UAE—but oil prices may continue to rise with many experts predicting global economic shocks that will filter down to the US and even more of its allies. On top of which, each day that US squats on the Strait while doing effectively nothing leads to major political and credibility loss for Trump, who is being eaten alive by the press, and whose constituents are growing increasingly tired of his aimless political charades and impotent military adventures.
There’s an argument to be made that Iran can in fact outlast such a blockade while it is the US that will take the more lasting damage overall. That’s not even to mention the monetary costs of imposing the blockade with the current naval forces active in the region.
That leads us to the final topic—CNN’s latest piece releases shocking new figures of the US’s munitions expenditures during the Iran conflict:
This defense writer summarizes the main figures:
Directly from the CNN article:
The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran and created a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in the next few years, according to experts and three people familiar with recent internal Defense Department stockpile assessments.
The figures are pulled from a new CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) report, whose key graphic tells the whole story:
As you can see, in only a couple short weeks the US fired thousands of its rarest and most valuable munitions, which are only produced at a trickle of a few dozen per year each. This is why, as we had just written about in the last piece, the Pentagon is apparently in talks with major US automakers like Ford, GM, Oshkosh, etc., about converting their production lines into munitions production.
During the hot phase of the recent conflict, a shot-down US JASSM cruise missile was found in Iran which had the manufacturing date of May 2025 written on it, which led many weapons experts and commentators to conclude that the US had depleted old stock and was down to its most recently produced batches:
What can we ourselves conclude from that?
That it can’t possibly be Iran that “folds first” because, at a production rate of only a few dozen per year, the US simply cannot afford to prolong the conflict much longer, lest it run its magazines completely dry and becomes exposed for all time. This is why we can only assume that Trump’s gasbag lecturing is nothing but inert bluffery meant to frighten an increasingly unvexed Iran into making concessions.
Latest footage from Tehran showed massive crowds taking to the streets in celebration of the ceasefire’s expiration:
At the same time, the IRGC released a new video of their underground missile and drone production sites, claiming that—as I had suggested just in the previous report—that they are producing and updating their munitions even faster now during the “ceasefire” than they were pre-war:
A video of underground tunnels, in which Iranian missiles and drones are produced and stored, was published by the Iranian War Message Centre.
The centre states that the Iranians are ready for the next stage of the war.
“During the lull, our speed in updating missile and drone launch platforms is even higher than before the war. The enemy is unable to create similar conditions and is forced to transport ammunition drop by drop from the other side of the world. They have lost this stage of the war,” the statement said.
Well, looks like the ball’s back in Gimmick Don’s court now.
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I don't see how Trump survives this. He has played a very poor game. My guess is there will be a point soon where the Bab el Mandeb will be closed and the pressure will really ramp up. Plus the longer Iran shows it's a match for the US the more support they will get form China and Russia. Russia is reportedly sending a lot of gear via the Caspian.
Generally speaking, I've found that whatever Trump says, expect the opposite. When he said he "expected to be bombing Iran", that made me breathe a sigh of relief that the ceasefire was going to be extended
The obvious mutual-blockade dropping should've been done, but wasn't done.
The question now is what breaks first. To date, we have not seen major economic data in the US since the start of the war. March numbers didn't tell much, no time for the effect to hit. Europe has already shown a jump in inflation, faster than i expected. Now we need the US.
Trump sees things we don't; his cabinet has real time access to economic numbers. And to me the evidence is very clear that a recession is on the way, and major inflation is absolutely certain.
The Gulf countries are making the mistake of the ages, a truly epic strategic blunder, by handing over their foreign policy to the US and letting them run wild with it.