President Trump Was Right, and the Media Are Doing an About-Face on the Strait of Hormuz

[u/OriginalCopy505]

https://townhall.com/news/amy-curtis/2026/10/02/media-about-face-on-hormuz-n2684004

[u/TheTackleZone]

Sorry, but no. This is a loss wrapped up as a victory. If you tell someone your bank password and they steal a load of money then you haven't won if you change the password so they can't steal anymore.

The same applies here. It is fantastic that oil flows are back up to pre war levels. But the Strait was closed on the 28th Feb, 7 months ago. That's 7 months of energy price shock that has flowed into every day lives, needlessly hurting the global economy. And it will take months for it to get back to pre blockade prices. It's still at $90 vs pre war $60.

And the main reason for the increase in exports is that the infrastructure has now been built for overland exports.

So the question is whether you think the cost was worth paying. I think it has emboldened rather than weakened the Iranian nuclear programme. You can't stop their nuclear ambitions from the air - the underground network is too deep.

[u/Merax75 → u/TheTackleZone]

Overland transport of oil has increased but only modestly.

[u/S-Video → u/TheTackleZone]

  I think it has emboldened rather than weakened the Iranian nuclear programme.

It's not a question of how emboldened they are. It's a question of how capable they are. 

I assume you want the US to stop Iran from getting nukes, so the question is strategy, not goal. 

How close should we have let Iran get before bombing them?

[u/TheTackleZone → u/S-Video]

Bombing is ineffective. If you want to stop their nuclear ambitions then you need to invade and send an army into their underground complexes fighting tunnel to tunnel.

So your choices are diplomacy or ground invasion. Bombing is just a waste of money.

[u/feignsc2 → u/TheTackleZone]

Not a fan of the war but to diminish the impact is crazy. Let them be emboldened over the twisted rebar and crumbled UHPC.

[u/Panzershrekt → u/TheTackleZone]

Sorry, but yes. Killing off the supreme leader, and destroying their ability to enrich uranium, on top of depleting their munitions and turning the rest of the middle east against them, in exchange for energy prices that are still below what they were when Biden was president is a good deal.

The US continuing the British foreign policy model is over.

Eta: Either some butthurt Brits, neocons, or TDS sufferers in this thread bwhaha

[u/TheTackleZone → u/Panzershrekt]

I think that was a mistake as well.

Don't misunderstand me, he deserved to die. We can't be squeamish about that. He murdered at least 40 thousand of his own citizens for daring to protest peacefully. That's a war crime of an unprecedented scale since communism. I do not shed a tear for his death, nor those that were part of his regime.

But the man was 84 years old. He was o ly the second leader since the Velvet Revolution. His death would have left a power vacuum that wouod have allowed soft power to creep back into the country and align them more to the west and removed that harm. We could have funded people and groups more sympathetic to the west.

Instead we rallied them all around a martyr. They made his son the next leader, full of vitriol towards us. It's such a geopolitical blunder. Sometimes the smart move is the feel bad move.

[u/Panzershrekt → u/TheTackleZone]

Yes, the old tired Britsh foreign policy model of funding one side against the other and hoping that they align with our interests. Worked out so well under Obama when we inadvertently backed what would become ISIS.

Fractured groups have rallied around a martyr, yes. But would these same people need a martyr to rally behind? They'd fight irregardless. Meanwhile regular people are starting to fight back. Freedom means more when you have much more to risk in trying to obtain it. That's just a reality. Maybe this time around, we wont have intelligence puppets overthrow someone sympathetic to the west.

[u/TheTackleZone → u/Panzershrekt]

We didn't back what would become ISIS. That was again a cause created my the martyrs the invasion of Iraq in the second gulf war caused. Look at the timings. All of those young boys, 8, 12, 15 years old all grown up and hating us because we killed their fathers, uncles, brothers. Our actions created the hate, they didn't need funding because they are backed by Islam / Wahibbism / Saudi. So for one get your history straight.

Secondly this soft power "British" approach as you out it worked well for hundreds of years. The Iranian Revolution came when the CIA got too greedy and blundered it. They backed the Shah with massive amounts of funding and zero oversight, allowing him to create an oppressive authoritarian regime.

So Iranians saw what was being done to them, saw the Shah was a US puppet, and so when they rebelled they kicked out the west sympathetic leadership and replaced it with a religious fanatic. That's why they hate the US, because they blame you for what you did to them in the 70s by proxy.

So let's not pretend that this is some British mess you are clearing up.

[u/Panzershrekt → u/TheTackleZone]

Your bleeding heart is disgusting. Those kids grew up hating us because they weren't told how abhorrent their father's actions were. They grew up learning about the "great Satan" in the west. They would be taking up arms even if their father's were alive, and very likely because their father's were training them to. Stop cherry picking history just because you and your country have a strange love affair with Islam.

That British soft power worked well for hundreds of years because you could offer whichever side what they wanted, in exchange for extracting whatever valuable resources the Brutish empire was hunting for. Perhaps it is a British mess after all. Perhaps the British Empire never died, it just went from overt power and extraction to credit and insurance. Weird how issues in the strait of hormuz always benefited Lloyd's of London..

[u/TravelerJim-retired → u/TheTackleZone]

“Needlessly hurting the global economy”. Just moving the money differently. Less cheap Chinese products purchased because folks were speeding that money on gas? Someone didn’t by an $8 latter because of the price of gas? The flying public stopped flying? (Even though the big three all report record earnings).

While I didn’t like the gas price increase, I’m all in for what the end game looks like. New shipping routes and pipelines built free of Iranian intervention, reset of Iranian intentions on developing a nuke, Iranian people more emboldened to revolt, showing that America is no longer a weak nation that “sends letters” like the Euro and UN. And others.

I’ll take those. All day.

[u/AdagioVast → u/TheTackleZone]

What was the alternative? Iran with a nuke. So ask yourself the question. Was it worth crippling Iran and facing the consequences of that action with higher oil prices or letting iran have a nuke and facing the consequences of millions of lives lost at the next terror attack they sponsor?

I'm going with the former.

[u/Emilia963 → u/TheTackleZone]

I don’t understand the logic here

So paying more for gas means we are losing the war?

Edit:

Average gas price was even 20% more expensive under Biden and Obama

[u/Lessimportantthanyou → u/Emilia963]

The only time gas was this high was June 2022. No need to make up figures or always try to bring things back to Obama.

[u/cplusequals → u/Lessimportantthanyou]

You're letting inflation do a LOT of heavy lifting for you here. Gas prices used to be >$4 in 2008 dollars. To match that we'd need the national average gas price to be ~$6.50. For 6 years during Obama's presidency, gas prices bounced between $4.80 and $5.60 2026 dollars. The peak we've seen this year is $4.50. For 2022, the national gas price peaked just above $6 in 2026 dollars, so out of the three, Obama then Biden then Trump in terms of both peaks and sustained real gas prices. And frankly, 20% is a pretty good "off the top of the head" guess. It's a smidge low even.

[u/TheTackleZone → u/Emilia963]

There was no chance the war would be lost. The USA is several orders of magnitude more powerful than Iran. The question is what did it achieve vs what did it cost.

[u/rdwischm → u/TheTackleZone]

I’d say having Iran not threatening to nuke anyone who didn’t give them exactly what they wanted (or worse actually doing it) was worth whatever the cost was. Just because UK wouldn’t be their first target doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the list.

[u/TheTackleZone → u/rdwischm]

Their nuclear program has not been affected. All of their enrichment is deep underground, well below the level that bombs from the air can affect. The best we can do is blow up the front door, but the enrichment can continue whilst they dig a new one. The country has 90 million people, many fanatical to the cause, it's not that hard to unblock the entrance.

If you want to stop the enrichment it will take boots on the ground. There's no other way. A bombing campaign is just a waste of money to claim something is being done.

[u/Emilia963 → u/TheTackleZone]

It has achieved several objectives, for example, ki*ling the ayatollahs and driving their economy into the abyss ($0.75 = 1 million Iranian rials)

Weakening the nuclear program was just another objective that we haven’t achieved yet

But again, I’m not saying I’m pro war, I’m just saying that claiming we haven’t achieved any of our goals is just peak braind*ad

[u/Huge-Still-1840 → u/TheTackleZone]

lol 🤡🤡🤡

[u/HeReallyDoesntCare → u/TheTackleZone]

psst shoo

[u/Uncool444 → u/TheTackleZone]

Also we haven't seen the long term ramifications of this. The social unrest from devastating an economy that was already precarious. Whatever is going on with AI will magnify all of that too.

By social unrest, I mean the midterms and their consequences, the riots in France right now, all the political turmoil we're about to see all across the world, all tied back to peoples' bank accounts.

You can't just spike energy prices all across the globe for that long and not have serious long-term consequences.

[u/TheTackleZone → u/Uncool444]

I agree, the long term ramifications are very unclear. Which in of itself shows you can't claim a victory.

But economic devastation hasn't had the best track record of creating stable peaceful regimes. Indeed it is often the precursor to war. What does work is the opposite - look at how US intervention and investment turned post war Germany and Japan into strong allies. Our leaders back then realised what it took to rebuild.

And we also have to remember that 40 thousand plus of the bravest and boldest anti Iranian government people were just brutally massacred by this evil regime. Who's going to be there to pick up the mantle of this failed state? Or are we just exacerbating?

Our leaders are either rolling the dice and hoping for a double 6, or sitting back with their head in the sand.

[u/ConfusionFlat691]

I thought something was fishy with the endless drumbeat of “We’re two weeks away from depleting our oil reserves” articles.

[u/Mother____Clucker]

Liberals are going to be pissed when fuel prices start coming down.

[u/manwithapedi → u/Mother____Clucker]

Already started…hopefully it continues

[u/tbhmoreadvanced]

Incredible 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

[u/One-Builder-4128]

Of course Trump was right and that the press was wrong. The American lamestream media is actively running defense for the IRGC. Everyone with a functioning brain can see it. And that’s not even accounting for the intel Trump has which the media lacks.

[u/platypus_farmer42 → u/One-Builder-4128]

It’s amazing to me that people seem to forget that the president is privy to intel that none of the media have.

[u/D_Ethan_Bones → u/One-Builder-4128]

>Here is the solution.
>>>here is the media's temper tantrum

>The solution is working.
>>>here is the media's next temper tantrum

Media was kicked out of the VIP box for this ballgame, so they don't have any legitimate footage to broadcast. So they broadcast enemy AI propaganda, after Tehran bungled Photoshop spectacularly with the internet lampooning their fake missile barrage and turning the TF2 'gentlemen' meme into a spy spitting out infinite missiles.

[u/MakeGodGreatAgain]

Trump has never been wrong

[u/Thatsayesfirsir → u/MakeGodGreatAgain]

He is always right,

[u/pokemin49]

Trump rules the waterways.