It’s not unknown for dementia patients to lash out without restraint when confronted with unexpected obstacles. Keeping this in mind, this report is unsurprising, at least in general outline:
President Donald Trump rejected a plan that would see Oman and Iran jointly charge a toll for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, threatening harsh consequences for the U.S. ally if it follows through on discussions that have reportedly taken place with Tehran.
“Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up,” he told reporters Wednesday at a White House Cabinet meeting. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”
Opening up the strait, a critical transit lane for some 20 percent of the world’s oil, has emerged as a lodestar in negotiations to end the three-month U.S. war against Iran. The Middle East country effectively closed the waterway soon after it was first attacked by the U.S. and Israel in February. The strait has remained choked off, even after the president announced a ceasefire in April contingent on Iran fully reopening it. [Politico]
Oman is a long-time ally of the United States, so at least the left side of the political spectrum considers this a faux-pas.
But it’s worth considering alternative explanations. Two come to mind.
- President Trump is a bully. Bullies often show their dominance by beating up friends. It shows that their eminence is such that they are an independent force that can do what it wants, when it wants. Threatening long-time ally Oman in this off-hand manner is part of the psychology.
- President Trump is religiously motivated. For newer readers, this piece from Chad Bauman gives the religious background and consequent, if hypothesized, motivations for President Trump that he’s discovered and deduced[1]. Here it is enough to note the President is attempting to gain favor with the Divine, and everyone else takes second place.
Whichever may be true, if any, they are not an appropriate basis from which to conduct foreign negotiations or foreign policy. His Cabinet should be pushing him to resign, and resign NOW.
1 Interestingly, a recent Andrew Sullivan interview of Eli Lake also included the same revelations, although I’m unsure whether that counts as consilience or if Lake also has Bauman as a source.
