The currency is less fundamentally meaningful than the group of purchasers buying their basket of goods.
> Long-term measurements of value are kind of weird
They are worthless. Best case, you’re asking a traveler problem. Does an American tourist rejecting a local Thai delicacy render it worthless? Of course not. They’re different purchasers. Similarly, trying to compare pricing preferences across centuries is borderline voodoo—you’re doing spherical-cow math.
Not really. It's just that the divergence in price analysis coming out of banks vs the what people in the oil industry are saying is just so incredibly divergent that I refuse to believe that the hotshot analysts at GS/JPM are that ignorant.
in retrospect, the american obsession and mental sensitivity to gas prices is very curious. The average national gas price in 2008 was about $3.50 which is almost what it is now in 2026. And being a commodity product sold per gallon, there's obviously no shrinkflation or enshittification going on. It's actually remarkably stable in the face of almost 20 years of steady broader inflation.
Well it's not just recent price increases. Any time gasoline goes above $4, congress is at risk of being flipped (completely independent of the current party in control).
I understand that the impact to Americans is that for every penny increase in the price of a gallon of gas, averaged over a year, is about $1 billion in consumer spending . So if the average price goes from $2.99 to $3.49 , that’s 50 billion dollars.
I like how Pete Hegseth was gloating how the world's most powerful military managed to sink Iran's navy's shoddy boats sitting in the harbors, like it was some some crazy achievement.
> Iran's navy's shoddy boats sitting in the harbors
A win isn’t diminished because the enemy fucked up. Neutralizing a massive national investment is a military win. Why Tehran didn’t scatter its boats is a chapter for a future manual.
> 6 weeks after this conflict is over china will re-supply whatever was bombed
Probably. Same as us to the Gulf and Israel. Beijing has proven itself a non-terrorist actor. I’d be fine with Tehran as its suzerainty alongside Russia.
Oh, they do just fine terrorizing their own populace, and chinese citizens & chinese origin folks living abroad, and neighbors; those they can currently reach.
That is not a war crime. First, there is no way to know that a naval vessel is unarmed. Second, even if unarmed, it does not mean it has safe passage. Once it gets back to its base, it can load with munitions and then come and fight. Put it differently: if instead of a naval ship, you see an enemy tank, should you not shoot at it because it is unarmed?
That ship was involved in naval exercises at the invitation of the host navy, India.
That ship was unarmed. Nothing unusual there - that was the original plan for the joint navy drills. A large complement of the crew was A BRASS BAND!
The Indian's (and this has been formally confirmed since) communicated to the Americans that this was an UNARMED ship which was about to leave Indian territorial waters on its way home.
So the Americans KNEW where the ship was (they were told) and KNEW it was completely unarmed.
And they sunk it anyway, and refused to pick up any survivors.
Thats a crystal clear WAR CRIME. The kind which is writ large in western history books for 80 years, condemning the conduct of the Nazi Germany submarine units.
None of that changes that it was an Iranian warship.
Warships of nations involved in armed conflict are always valid targets for the adversary.
Otherwise it would also have been a bunch of war crimes for the Iranian ships destroyed at the pier by cruise missile or bombs.
India was not a party to the conflict so they can't vouch for the unarmedness of a warship on either side one way or another. But even if they could, unarmed warships are valid targets for the reason the other commenter pointed out (they can quickly become armed).
Nor does international law necessarily require a warship to personally pick up all survivors, and in fact gives warships a fair amount of leeway to consider their own security along with their own ability to execute a successful rescue and successfully berth the shipwrecked.
Modern submarines, while not exempt, tend to fall into that proviso more than other classes because they are not equipped to conduct surface rescue (unlike WWII-era submarines they don't even have a keel for surfaced stationkeeping), have no brig facilities, have no sickbay and very little other medical facilities.
Once it was clear that the Sri Lankan navy (the closest ships to the Dena's survivors) was responding, the responsibility of the U.S. to see to rescue had been accomplished.
The U.S. definition balances military necessity against humanity, which in this case is not looking good: no mitigating attempts to reduce the death toll – no warnings, no attempt to disable the ship – and since the ship was trying to get permission to dock in Sri Lanka or India at the time, it’s hard to justify a claim of military necessity for a ship which was either unarmed or very lightly armed and clearly posed absolutely no threat to the much larger and better equipped U.S. navy. It’s unlikely to ever see a formal trial but I think quite a few people will see it as if not an outright war-crime, at least a betrayal of military honor.
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
Indeed, however despite being convicted of that and other charges, this particular charge was not factored into his sentence, precisely because British and U.S. submarines also engaged in the same practice during the conflict.
And that was with WW2-era submarines which were designed to operate mostly on the surface and could make provision for doing things like picking up downed aviators and engaging in "crash dives" to rapidly submerge.
Modern submarines are designed to operate mostly submerged and have very poor station-keeping while surfaced, and even lack the ability to crash dive (because you're supposed to be submerged long before you get into the danger zone and then stay submerged throughout).
It was proven in court that even the Nazi German submarines made good faith efforts to rescue drowning sailors, and they only stopped when one u-boat was sunk (or damaged?) by a US plane while it was rescuing US sailors (after which, the German navy gave out orders forbiding the practice).
Dönitz's blanket order that no submarine should ever pick up survivors is absolutely not equivilant to any individidual submarine deciding not to pick up survivors because {reasons}.
The first is a blanket order to ignore all survivors all the time,
the second is a specific case of not picking up survivors under a general umbrella of picking up survivors save for when there are other factors.
In this specific instance they can argue, should it ever go before an international tribunal, that they lacked room and that more applicable search and rescue was already en route.
I'm not arguing in defence of Hegseth et al. but I am pointing out that things are not nearly as clear cut and straighforward as you claim.
The Geneva Convention II hedges a lot wrt submarine warfare - few submarines have the capacity to take on many survivors .. they're already pressed for space.
You could ague they had an obligation to notify search and rescue ... at a time when the nearest search and rescue was already alerted and en route.
and scroll down to Failure to Rescue IRIS Dena’s Shipwrecked Crew
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
A charge that didn't stick, a practice engaged in by both the British and U.S. submarines
In the aftermath of World War II, the issue of rescuing survivors following submarine attacks took center stage during the trial of Admiral Karl Dönitz before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
After Allied attacks on a U-boat attempting to rescue survivors of an ocean liner, the RMS Laconia, Dönitz issued the Laconia Order, which instructed: “All attempts at rescuing members of ships that have been sunk, including attempts to pick up persons swimming, or to place them in lifeboats, or attempts to upright capsized boats, or to supply provisions or water are to cease.”
The court held that the order violated the 1936 London Protocol on submarine warfare, which required that the passengers and crew of merchant vessels be placed in safety before a warship could sink them.
Yet, because British and U.S. submarines engaged in the same practice during the conflict, it did not factor the breaches of the law of submarine warfare into Dönitz’s sentence.
Legally, there's much here that's hard to pin down, massive grey areas and a lot of jelly to nail to the wall.
Ethically - the US forces under Hegeseth are behaving like arseholes and absolutely skating a line, the same objective (taking out the ship) could have been achieved in a number of less odious ways.
They didn't have to pick them up. They could have surfaced (remember, it was KNOWN that there was no threat) and tossed out a few inflatable life rafts.
As someone who disdains hyperbolic, motivated framings of everything in the news cycle, I normally don't like to use words like that. But, it was interesting to see the news discuss the "first time since world war two" component of this event, that by WWII standards, would have been seen as a cowardly violation of the rules of war.
The were in allied water, on a regularly scheduled drill, unarmed.
“failing to do everything possible to rescue those aboard is certainly a war crime,” as the Second Geneva Convention requires militaries to take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded, and sick.
Others have pointed out that the war crime is not picking up survivors. What shocks the conscience here regardless that sinking the ship itself may not be a war crime is the seemingly obvious reason this was done was target practice involving mostly innocent lives. The US would have had many opportunities to simply board and seize the ship. If there had been any resistance at that point that put US forces at risk then force may have some minimal justification for taking lives.
Surely started because of Israel. Maybe there was more back and forth but it really seems like the clique around trump are specifically in Bibi's pocket
I hate this narrative building. No, "it's Israel" is a convenient US propaganda machine trying to create a narrative of deniability.
Sure, AIPAC have a strong hold on US politics. But AIPAC have existed for 70 years, and Bibi have been asking for "pleased bomb Iran" to every president he have managed to converse with. And every president said "no are you crazy". That the current president somehow couldn't say no is a false copium bullshit by Americans trying to relieve themselves of any blame in the conflict.
Hell, US intelligence have since at least 2009 [1] said "Trust in Bibi" and encourage Isreal to strike Iran is the best course of action for an Iran confrontation.
"Israel would've done it without us" Trump said and no one asks "and you're telling me the world's strongest military (and intelligence and economic) country couldn't tell that madman to back off....?"
No it's US war, started by US imperial ambitions, executed by a satellite state (Israel), sugarcoated with stupidity at the top just lisk Bush. Own the fucking war you started, and don't blame everything on the Jews like nazism did
Being in his pocket means they owe him something. They don't. They make their own decisions, meant to be representative of the constiutents that did and did not vote for them. If they go against their consitutents wishes, that was their own decision to make. They are to blame.
Problem I have with that is it starts crossing the line into the "rich Israeli people control the U.S." which for anti-semites communicates "Jewish people are the problem."
No, Trump and the Republicans currently in power in the U.S. wanted this themselves and acted on their own moral depravity. Letting them scapegoat the decision to Israel/Bibi solves nothing to address the decision making made here (without Congressional approval) in the U.S.
Trump and his Cabinet have agency, and any suggestion otherwise is problematic.
High oil prices hurt the US economy much more than China anyway. We're vastly more dependent on shipping and transport and even more vastly less elastic with our fuel demand. The only US interests who would want this are domestic oil producers, who are a small fraction even of the Republican funding base.
Can you point to any good plots or schemes they’ve pulled off in the past? We’re starting our sixth year with this guy at the helm and so far it’s nothing but a cavalcade of stupid.
He simply wanted a quick strike, not a war. He thought Iran would capitulate and not take any actions after the strike.
His thinking did not even change. Just read this 2021 article about preventing Trump from starting a war with Iran: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington... Trump is predictable. What he thought in 2021 was similar to what he thought in February 2026.
> Trump did not want a war, the chairman believed, but he kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against U.S. interests in the region. Milley, by statute the senior military adviser to the President, was worried that Trump might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley would say.
It is notable that the worlds major available oil reserves are now[0] in Venezuela, Canada, the US and Russia. Democracies are capable of playing 4D chess even if none of the people involved are up to the challenge. There are a lot of power centres that could stop Trump if they saw it as a problem for their interests; like Congress, some people in the administration or even a few people in CENTCOM (although they'd be more delaying the inevitable).
That being said, unleashing this blow on Asia is insanely risky whether it is intentional or no. The Trump administration has a well-earned reputation for not being direct in their warmaking and the Asian's might decide not to go down without a fight. And the US is likely to get nothing but ill-will from the continent for the next generation. And I doubt Trump will politically survive the blows the US economy will take in the process of shredding the global oil market.
$147 in July 2008 had the purchasing power of ~$218 today [1].
[1] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
$147 was ~€95 in July 2008, which corresponds to ~€140 today. Which would be ~$160. And if you choose a third currency, you will get a third price.
Long-term measurements of value are kind of weird, as your unit of measurement can gain and lose value relative to the units other people are using.
The currency is less fundamentally meaningful than the group of purchasers buying their basket of goods.
> Long-term measurements of value are kind of weird
They are worthless. Best case, you’re asking a traveler problem. Does an American tourist rejecting a local Thai delicacy render it worthless? Of course not. They’re different purchasers. Similarly, trying to compare pricing preferences across centuries is borderline voodoo—you’re doing spherical-cow math.
Goldman Sachs has been sandbagging their crude forecasts so hilariously that I'm convinced they're frontrunning their customers.
Do they meaningfully deviate from their peers?
Not really. It's just that the divergence in price analysis coming out of banks vs the what people in the oil industry are saying is just so incredibly divergent that I refuse to believe that the hotshot analysts at GS/JPM are that ignorant.
Also adding: the spike in 2008 was transient and partially juiced by a weak dollar. Unfortunately, we will probably get no respite this time around.
At the current geopolitical trajectory, I also doubt $147 is anywhere near the limit of where oil is going.
in retrospect, the american obsession and mental sensitivity to gas prices is very curious. The average national gas price in 2008 was about $3.50 which is almost what it is now in 2026. And being a commodity product sold per gallon, there's obviously no shrinkflation or enshittification going on. It's actually remarkably stable in the face of almost 20 years of steady broader inflation.
> the american obsession and mental sensitivity to gas prices is very curious
It strikes me as sensible. DRAM being cheaper over decades doesn’t negate the impact of recent price hikes.
Well it's not just recent price increases. Any time gasoline goes above $4, congress is at risk of being flipped (completely independent of the current party in control).
> Any time gasoline goes above $4, congress is at risk of being flipped
Inflation is a bitch. It’s also been the ruin of republics since at least the Romans, possibly sooner.
I understand that the impact to Americans is that for every penny increase in the price of a gallon of gas, averaged over a year, is about $1 billion in consumer spending . So if the average price goes from $2.99 to $3.49 , that’s 50 billion dollars.
Iran is doing this without a navy
> Iran is doing this without a navy
They never needed a navy. And to the degree a navy was helpful, it was in the form of fast-attack craft. We don't seem to have hit those much yet [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islam...
I like how Pete Hegseth was gloating how the world's most powerful military managed to sink Iran's navy's shoddy boats sitting in the harbors, like it was some some crazy achievement.
> Iran's navy's shoddy boats sitting in the harbors
A win isn’t diminished because the enemy fucked up. Neutralizing a massive national investment is a military win. Why Tehran didn’t scatter its boats is a chapter for a future manual.
6 weeks after this conflict is over china will re-supply whatever was bombed :)
> 6 weeks after this conflict is over china will re-supply whatever was bombed
Probably. Same as us to the Gulf and Israel. Beijing has proven itself a non-terrorist actor. I’d be fine with Tehran as its suzerainty alongside Russia.
> Beijing has proven itself a non-terrorist actor
Oh, they do just fine terrorizing their own populace, and chinese citizens & chinese origin folks living abroad, and neighbors; those they can currently reach.
Or the one coming back from manoeuvres that wasn’t carrying any munitions.
War crimes every day.
https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/trump-us-navy-sank-unarmed-ira...
That is not a war crime. First, there is no way to know that a naval vessel is unarmed. Second, even if unarmed, it does not mean it has safe passage. Once it gets back to its base, it can load with munitions and then come and fight. Put it differently: if instead of a naval ship, you see an enemy tank, should you not shoot at it because it is unarmed?
Completely false.
That ship was involved in naval exercises at the invitation of the host navy, India.
That ship was unarmed. Nothing unusual there - that was the original plan for the joint navy drills. A large complement of the crew was A BRASS BAND!
The Indian's (and this has been formally confirmed since) communicated to the Americans that this was an UNARMED ship which was about to leave Indian territorial waters on its way home.
So the Americans KNEW where the ship was (they were told) and KNEW it was completely unarmed.
And they sunk it anyway, and refused to pick up any survivors.
Thats a crystal clear WAR CRIME. The kind which is writ large in western history books for 80 years, condemning the conduct of the Nazi Germany submarine units.
None of that changes that it was an Iranian warship.
Warships of nations involved in armed conflict are always valid targets for the adversary.
Otherwise it would also have been a bunch of war crimes for the Iranian ships destroyed at the pier by cruise missile or bombs.
India was not a party to the conflict so they can't vouch for the unarmedness of a warship on either side one way or another. But even if they could, unarmed warships are valid targets for the reason the other commenter pointed out (they can quickly become armed).
Nor does international law necessarily require a warship to personally pick up all survivors, and in fact gives warships a fair amount of leeway to consider their own security along with their own ability to execute a successful rescue and successfully berth the shipwrecked.
Modern submarines, while not exempt, tend to fall into that proviso more than other classes because they are not equipped to conduct surface rescue (unlike WWII-era submarines they don't even have a keel for surfaced stationkeeping), have no brig facilities, have no sickbay and very little other medical facilities.
Once it was clear that the Sri Lankan navy (the closest ships to the Dena's survivors) was responding, the responsibility of the U.S. to see to rescue had been accomplished.
Edit: Actual legal experts go into this more at https://www.justsecurity.org/133397/sinking-iran-frigate-den... but this is basically a slam dunk.
Whether it was a good idea is a whole different question, but warships sinking warships is what is supposed to happen in war.
It’s, by definition, not a war crime. Military brass bands are eligible targets as are unarmed naval ships.
The U.S. definition balances military necessity against humanity, which in this case is not looking good: no mitigating attempts to reduce the death toll – no warnings, no attempt to disable the ship – and since the ship was trying to get permission to dock in Sri Lanka or India at the time, it’s hard to justify a claim of military necessity for a ship which was either unarmed or very lightly armed and clearly posed absolutely no threat to the much larger and better equipped U.S. navy. It’s unlikely to ever see a formal trial but I think quite a few people will see it as if not an outright war-crime, at least a betrayal of military honor.
A submarine has no duty to warn a surface ship.
In what world is sinking a warship in international waters a war crime? Because it isn't in this one.
From my original post:
"AND REFUSED TO PICK UP ANY SURVIVORS"
In the absence of any threat (the ship was alone, and unarmed), then refusing to pick up survivors is ABSOLUTELY a TEXTBOOK war crime.
Under the Geneva Convention, and under the US's own legal code.
Thats not an opinion, thats a statement of fact.
Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
Indeed, however despite being convicted of that and other charges, this particular charge was not factored into his sentence, precisely because British and U.S. submarines also engaged in the same practice during the conflict.
And that was with WW2-era submarines which were designed to operate mostly on the surface and could make provision for doing things like picking up downed aviators and engaging in "crash dives" to rapidly submerge.
Modern submarines are designed to operate mostly submerged and have very poor station-keeping while surfaced, and even lack the ability to crash dive (because you're supposed to be submerged long before you get into the danger zone and then stay submerged throughout).
It's not entirely uncommon for submariners on the submarine deck to die from fairly basic operations while on the surface (e.g. USS Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2006 lost 2 sailors this way: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/sir-men-went-overboar...)
Thats not why he wasn't convicted of THAT charge.
It was proven in court that even the Nazi German submarines made good faith efforts to rescue drowning sailors, and they only stopped when one u-boat was sunk (or damaged?) by a US plane while it was rescuing US sailors (after which, the German navy gave out orders forbiding the practice).
Everything I said in my previous 2 posts stands.
Dönitz's blanket order that no submarine should ever pick up survivors is absolutely not equivilant to any individidual submarine deciding not to pick up survivors because {reasons}.
The first is a blanket order to ignore all survivors all the time,
the second is a specific case of not picking up survivors under a general umbrella of picking up survivors save for when there are other factors.
In this specific instance they can argue, should it ever go before an international tribunal, that they lacked room and that more applicable search and rescue was already en route.
I'm not arguing in defence of Hegseth et al. but I am pointing out that things are not nearly as clear cut and straighforward as you claim.
The Geneva Convention II hedges a lot wrt submarine warfare - few submarines have the capacity to take on many survivors .. they're already pressed for space.
You could ague they had an obligation to notify search and rescue ... at a time when the nearest search and rescue was already alerted and en route.
See: https://www.justsecurity.org/133397/sinking-iran-frigate-den...
and scroll down to Failure to Rescue IRIS Dena’s Shipwrecked Crew
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
A charge that didn't stick, a practice engaged in by both the British and U.S. submarines
Legally, there's much here that's hard to pin down, massive grey areas and a lot of jelly to nail to the wall.Ethically - the US forces under Hegeseth are behaving like arseholes and absolutely skating a line, the same objective (taking out the ship) could have been achieved in a number of less odious ways.
Trump loves rolling in this kind of mud.
They didn't have to pick them up. They could have surfaced (remember, it was KNOWN that there was no threat) and tossed out a few inflatable life rafts.
As someone who disdains hyperbolic, motivated framings of everything in the news cycle, I normally don't like to use words like that. But, it was interesting to see the news discuss the "first time since world war two" component of this event, that by WWII standards, would have been seen as a cowardly violation of the rules of war.
The were in allied water, on a regularly scheduled drill, unarmed.
> that by WWII standards, would have been seen as a cowardly violation of the rules of war
Source? Torpedoing anything with the enemy flag, down to civilian boats and merchant marines, was normalized by centuries of precedent by WWII.
What are you quoting?
It was the first time for the US since WWII. Other countries have used them in combat over the years since WWII. He couldn't even get that right.
You’re absolutely allowed to sink a warship in a war. The term war crime becomes meaningless if we cover military materiel.
Others have pointed out that the war crime is not picking up survivors. What shocks the conscience here regardless that sinking the ship itself may not be a war crime is the seemingly obvious reason this was done was target practice involving mostly innocent lives. The US would have had many opportunities to simply board and seize the ship. If there had been any resistance at that point that put US forces at risk then force may have some minimal justification for taking lives.
I don’t estimates of these investments firms seriously! They talk like today’s scenarios will stay put forever - whether good or bad.
https://archive.ph/ZwEdU
The United States is run by pirates
[dead]
There is one thing to say here, USA wants the price to be high so it can throttle china.
China is rapidly electrifying and gets a lot of energy from non-US coal. China also sells renewables to other countries.
The US will be harmed far more than China by consistently high oil prices.
Trump started the Iran war, apparently on a whim. There's no 4D chess going on here.
Surely started because of Israel. Maybe there was more back and forth but it really seems like the clique around trump are specifically in Bibi's pocket
I hate this narrative building. No, "it's Israel" is a convenient US propaganda machine trying to create a narrative of deniability.
Sure, AIPAC have a strong hold on US politics. But AIPAC have existed for 70 years, and Bibi have been asking for "pleased bomb Iran" to every president he have managed to converse with. And every president said "no are you crazy". That the current president somehow couldn't say no is a false copium bullshit by Americans trying to relieve themselves of any blame in the conflict.
Hell, US intelligence have since at least 2009 [1] said "Trust in Bibi" and encourage Isreal to strike Iran is the best course of action for an Iran confrontation.
"Israel would've done it without us" Trump said and no one asks "and you're telling me the world's strongest military (and intelligence and economic) country couldn't tell that madman to back off....?"
No it's US war, started by US imperial ambitions, executed by a satellite state (Israel), sugarcoated with stupidity at the top just lisk Bush. Own the fucking war you started, and don't blame everything on the Jews like nazism did
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran... chapter 5
Since the downvote, let me clarify
> are specifically in Bibi's pocket
Being in his pocket means they owe him something. They don't. They make their own decisions, meant to be representative of the constiutents that did and did not vote for them. If they go against their consitutents wishes, that was their own decision to make. They are to blame.
Problem I have with that is it starts crossing the line into the "rich Israeli people control the U.S." which for anti-semites communicates "Jewish people are the problem."
No, Trump and the Republicans currently in power in the U.S. wanted this themselves and acted on their own moral depravity. Letting them scapegoat the decision to Israel/Bibi solves nothing to address the decision making made here (without Congressional approval) in the U.S.
Trump and his Cabinet have agency, and any suggestion otherwise is problematic.
High oil prices hurt the US economy much more than China anyway. We're vastly more dependent on shipping and transport and even more vastly less elastic with our fuel demand. The only US interests who would want this are domestic oil producers, who are a small fraction even of the Republican funding base.
The folks controlling Trump are far more adept plotters and schemers than you give them credit for.
Can you point to any good plots or schemes they’ve pulled off in the past? We’re starting our sixth year with this guy at the helm and so far it’s nothing but a cavalcade of stupid.
[dead]
[citation needed]
Trump is not controlled. He wanted this.
He simply wanted a quick strike, not a war. He thought Iran would capitulate and not take any actions after the strike.
His thinking did not even change. Just read this 2021 article about preventing Trump from starting a war with Iran: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington... Trump is predictable. What he thought in 2021 was similar to what he thought in February 2026.
> Trump did not want a war, the chairman believed, but he kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against U.S. interests in the region. Milley, by statute the senior military adviser to the President, was worried that Trump might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley would say.
Whoever convinced him that a strike against 170+ school children wouldn't start a war should be fired and tried for war crimes. Not holding my breath.
[dead]
It is notable that the worlds major available oil reserves are now[0] in Venezuela, Canada, the US and Russia. Democracies are capable of playing 4D chess even if none of the people involved are up to the challenge. There are a lot of power centres that could stop Trump if they saw it as a problem for their interests; like Congress, some people in the administration or even a few people in CENTCOM (although they'd be more delaying the inevitable).
That being said, unleashing this blow on Asia is insanely risky whether it is intentional or no. The Trump administration has a well-earned reputation for not being direct in their warmaking and the Asian's might decide not to go down without a fight. And the US is likely to get nothing but ill-will from the continent for the next generation. And I doubt Trump will politically survive the blows the US economy will take in the process of shredding the global oil market.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oi...