How to Punch Yourself in the Face.
Three and a half weeks in. That’s where we are. Twenty-four days of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, oil at $112 a barrel, 13 American soldiers dead, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and the administration scrambling to lift sanctions on the very country we’re bombing just to keep gas prices from completely destroying what’s left of the economy we went in with. Let that sink in for a second.
This is the self-own of all self-owns. And I’m not sure we’ve hit bottom yet.
Let’s back up, because context matters here. Before the first missile flew on February 28th, Oman’s foreign minister — serving as mediator in nuclear talks between the US and Iran — announced a genuine breakthrough. Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, accepted full IAEA verification, and committed to irreversibly downgrading its existing stockpile. Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Iran’s own foreign minister echoed the same thing just days before the attack. Talks were scheduled to resume on March 2nd. Then we bombed them anyway — during the negotiations — killing Khamenei and hundreds of civilians in the opening strikes.
The administration has offered so many different explanations for why we did this — imminent threat, preempting an Iranian attack, destroying their missile capability, regime change, securing natural resources — that you’d be forgiven for thinking they made up the reason after they’d already decided to do it. Pentagon officials and Iran both rejected the “imminent threat” framing. Legal experts worldwide were nearly unanimous: the strikes were a clear violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against another state unless authorized by the Security Council or in genuine self-defense against an armed attack. Neither condition existed. Iran wasn’t attacking us. Iran wasn’t about to attack us. Iran was at the negotiating table. Launching the strikes mid-diplomacy also violates the UN Charter’s good faith requirement — a detail that seemed to trouble exactly nobody in this administration.
That last part shouldn’t be surprising. Trump told the New York Times in January that he doesn’t need international law. There you have it. The foundational rules that have kept major powers from just bombing whoever they feel like since 1945 — rules the US helped write — are apparently optional now. Good to know.
The Wall Street Journal reported it was Lindsey Graham who made the most compelling case to Trump to attack. The Washington Post reported Saudi Arabia’s crown prince lobbied Trump with multiple phone calls. So we went to war — apparently — because BB wanted it for years, MBS picked up the phone, and we had an impulsive leader with a cabinet full of people whose job is to say yes sir, great idea sir, not to pump the brakes.
Now here’s where it gets truly absurd.
Iran’s greatest strategic asset was always the Strait of Hormuz — a 24-mile chokepoint that roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through every year. Anyone who spent ten minutes thinking about attacking Iran had to know that closing the strait was Iran’s opening move. Apparently that ten minutes didn’t happen. The strait is effectively closed. Brent crude hit $112 a barrel. US gas prices are approaching $4 a gallon nationally and climbing. Global markets had their worst day in nearly a year. The UK Prime Minister called an emergency economic meeting.
And the administration’s solution? Lift sanctions on Iranian oil. And Russian oil. Yes, really. While actively bombing Iran, the Treasury Department signed off on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude — already at sea — being sold on global markets. They also temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, handing Vladimir Putin a financial lifeline that European allies called “very concerning” for Ukraine’s survival. Democrats called it “sickeningly, shamefully stupid.” A former CIA director said it gives Iran a financial lifeline. The countries that should be getting choked off by sanctions are the two countries benefiting most from a war we started. That’s not irony — that’s a complete strategic collapse dressed up in a press release.
Then there’s Venezuela, which was also about oil — supposedly. We went in, captured Maduro, and the administration seems to think the supply will just flow. It won’t. Even at full production, it would take years for Venezuela to meaningfully offset the disruption the Strait of Hormuz closure is causing to global supply. There is no quick fix for what we broke.
But step back even further, and the Iran war is just one entry on a list that would be funny if it weren’t terrifying. In the past year, this administration has threatened or taken aggressive action against: Canada (the “51st state”), Greenland (threatened military force and economic coercion against a NATO ally), Panama (demanded the canal back, claimed we “reclaimed” it), Venezuela (military raid, Maduro captured), Cuba (Rubio all but promised they’re next), Colombia (“sounds good to me” when asked about military action), Mexico (pushed to send US troops for cartels), Nigeria (bombed ISIS inside the country on Christmas Day), Syria (large-scale airstrikes), Nicaragua (a senator openly floated it as next on the list), and now Iran. That’s not a foreign policy. That’s a playlist.
The common thread through all of it is the same philosophy: I want it, I’m powerful enough to take it, so I will. Coercion isn’t a bug in this approach — it’s the feature. Consent, whether of a person, an ally, or a sovereign nation, is an inconvenience rather than a requirement.
It’s worth pointing out that a jury already found this president civilly liable for sexual abuse. He told us himself, on tape, that when you’re a star, you can do whatever you want to women. The judge in the Carroll case wrote that what Trump did fits the common understanding of rape, even if New York’s narrow legal definition didn’t quite cover it. The pattern — powerful man, takes what he wants, consequences are for other people — didn’t start with foreign policy. It’s just that now the whole world is on the receiving end.
You don’t build coalitions through coercion. You don’t earn loyalty by treating friends worse than enemies. When this administration needed allies, after insulting them, threatening their territory, and slapping tariffs on their goods — they weren’t there. And the administration seemed genuinely surprised. That’s what happens when your entire worldview is the schoolyard bully’s: punch first, assume everyone will fall in line. Most of the world didn’t. And the ones who did — Saudi Arabia and Israel — lobbied us into a war that’s now directly costing American lives and American wallets.
The people who always get rich from war are getting rich. The defense contractors, the oil interests, the right people in the right positions. The rest of us are watching gas prices climb, markets wobble, and a generation of goodwill with our actual allies evaporate — while we simultaneously bomb Iran and pay Iran for their oil.
History is going to have a lot to say about this moment. The question is just how much it’s going to cost the rest of us before we get there.
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Even that's Odd 
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