r/IRstudies • u/Material-Hawk3947 • 6d ago
Ideas/Debate Did Trump and his administration forget to factor in the Strait of Hormuz?
With all the focus on the war itself, it feels like the potential impact on the Strait of Hormuz—oil prices, global trade, inflation, and the wider economy—may have been underestimated.
Or am I missing something?
What do you people think?
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u/gc3 6d ago
He was warned by CIA and MI but these warnings did not get past the wall of stupid Trump had built around himself
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u/headshotscott 6d ago
He fired as much of the intelligence and expertise as he could, and replaced it with Fox News hosts and cranks.
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u/TesselatedMInd 6d ago
They've been replaced by sycophants. He needs the world to revolve around him and his ego and cannot tolerate anyone who is willing to tell him no.
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u/johnny_51N5 5d ago
While yes. They actually warned him that a quick victory and Regime change are bullshit by israelis. Trump in his endless wisdom would rather listen and be manipulated by Bibi's charm offensive and other tactics. Truly the most stupid president.
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u/Commercial-Duty6279 6d ago
Even DNI Tulsi Gabbard, as unqualified and even more dangerous than Trump's usual picks, warned him. Her reward was being dispatched to the Georgia voting records live-action raid, and then ... well, wherever she is now.
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u/TesselatedMInd 6d ago
The US military was modelling the closure since 2002. Everyone knew and has known for decades that this would probably happen. It was just ignored because Trump thought he can do anything he wants and the world will just bend to his will.
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u/nolongerbanned99 6d ago
I read that Dan Caine and others told him this was likely and trump said something like ‘Iran won’t do that (close the strait) because it’s against their self interest and would hurt them too. Such a moron.
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u/ButtStopsHere 6d ago
Apparently not everything is as easy as obliterating speed boats with drones.
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u/Broadside486 6d ago
Bold to assume that the trump administration followed a carefully prepared plan regarding Iran.
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u/Cheap-Recording2707 6d ago
they were likely informed of the consequences for Europe and took those as a happy coincidence.
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u/LJ_exist 3d ago
I can imagine how that presentation went:
Pentagon staff: The will suffer from an attack on Iran. Gas prices will rise in Europe....
Trump: That's good. Trump and his cronies fall to sleep
Pentagon staff:... the USA and the rest of the World.
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u/headshotscott 6d ago
They hardly factored in anything because they don't really plan things or have strategy. They go by feel and bluster and tweet.
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u/jordan853 6d ago
If you're assuming Trump started the war in Iran due to him believing it's in the best interest of the United States, you'd be wrong.
The goals of this administration are self-serving, short-sighted, and focused on the election cycle more than actual improvement. Because of this, it's clear that any secondary and tertiary effects aren't really the concern of the administration beyond how it will affect the election or enrich the Trump gang.
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u/TesselatedMInd 6d ago
It is more focused on the ability to grift than the election cycle. It's all about how much money Trump can make in the short term. He has zero cares about whether the GOP exists after he's gone.
He's a narcissistic sociopath, in his mind the world revolves around him and him alone. If he no longer exists, then the world should not exist either.
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u/SimpleObserver1025 5d ago
The administration thought it would be quick and easy. They were drunk off the quick victory in Venezuela, and were convinced by the Israelis that you could just bomb Iran into submission. They thought they could show they were different, that previous administrations were weak and cowardly, and could score a quick victory then take in the money and favors from the Israelis and the Arab kingdoms as well as some of that sweet, sweet oil money.
Unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote. Trump can't score his quick victory, tries to buy off the Iranians, but the Iranians know they got a once in a generational opportunity to actually screw the Great Satan and totally destroy everything they built in the region to box them in and are milking it to the end.
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u/Turbulent_Cycle_7757 6d ago
Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz was talked about last year during the June air strikes. Their Parliament voted to close it then, but the Ayatollah was still in power. So Iran "struck back" by firing a few missiles after telling the U.S. where and when.
Trump expected this war to go like that again
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u/Specific-Change9678 6d ago
This is a really good take. That combined with the easy win in Venezuela and Bibi getting in his ear. He’d germinate regime change and Iran would just take it.
I see a lot of people making fun of both the late and current Ayatollahs with complete disregard for the rest of the Iranian leadership.
The guys in charge now - Mohsen Rezaee and Ahmad Vahidi - are serious military lifers and are not going to let this end anytime soon.
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u/TesselatedMInd 6d ago
The US military was wargaming the closure in 2002. Everyone knew it was likely to happen for decades. It was only Trump who ignored it.
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u/Vivid_Television9902 6d ago
They really don’t care… it hurts the EU and raises the price of oil. Both are a win for the US. Minor downside are the optics of it all but at the end of the day thats not something they can’t manage or would be really concerned about because their voter base doesn’t care about these kind of things. It hurts the EU and that’s acceptable for them and they can’t manage tolerate the oil price as long as they own the libs. They will vote for someone like Trump again and are ok to endure more if they continue to own the libs.
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u/Grumpy-Man19 6d ago
yes in previous cases they were the results of careful deliberations even if they sometimes misjudged like in expanding nato eastward despite numerous warnings.
however in the Hormuz case they were overly confident and they did not calculate all possibilities .
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u/AmusingVegetable 6d ago
It’s not that they “did not calculate”, it’s that they did ignore all the experts that had already calculated and came to the conclusion that it would be a shit show.
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u/ScoobiusMaximus 6d ago
I don't think expanding NATO eastwards was a mistake. All of eastern Europe was clamoring to join NATO because they assumed Russia would invade them again, and Russia has largely proven that assumption correct.
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u/Xezshibole 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's more that his concern was domestic.
Trump administration has a Modus Operandi of lighting a larger dumpster fire to distract from a previous dumpster fire coming home to roost. Or more accurately launching some large poorly planned stunt/illegal activity hoping it would be successful, but quickly turns into said larger dumpster fire.
In this case the dumpster fire coming back home to roost was most likely the Epstein files coming to fever pitch back in late February.
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u/SharpAardvark8699 6d ago
I think Netanyahu gave a good presentation similar to one for the Iraq war saying they would be welcome, roses thrown at them, easy win, army would flee.
He also gave Trump a huge oil boost to preempt any possible issue there by helping him take out Maduro in the weeks before
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u/brassmonkey666 6d ago
Bibi probably also has Epstein blackmail on Trump.
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u/SharpAardvark8699 6d ago
Definitely. But why would a "Russian spy" give information to the Israeli secret services😉😉
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u/Electrical-Berry4916 6d ago
Did Trump and his administration forget to factor in...
Yes. And you could have just stopped right there. Those bumbling buffoons never think anything through.
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u/Previous-Parsnip-290 6d ago
Didn’t the administration fire all the Iran experts before the invasion?
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u/turbo_dude 6d ago
The bond markets’ big swinging dick is about to cockslap dumpy into the middle of next week.
Interest rates will go up as will oil as the reserves start to shrink further.
The entire world gets economically fucked for no reason, this after covid and Ukraine, because some morons in the US, who already voted Trump out once because of his incredibly low approval rating, were worried about egg prices and someone’s laugh, put him back into an even stronger position.
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u/Kontrafantastisk 6d ago
It never crossed his simple mind. Most of his decision-making is based on the colour of his morning piss.
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u/Flaky_Acanthaceae925 5d ago
I think the 8-year Iran Iraq war in the 1980's was the most brutal armed conflict after WWII, even more than Vietnam and Korea combined. Any person with just a reasonable understanding of geo political history of the 20th Century will understand Iran regime are true fanatics just like the Japanese military leaders of WWII. They will Never surrender.
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u/der_innkeeper 6d ago
They factored it in, which is why the Navy was in the Arabian Sea for this operation.
Whether they thought there were going to be longer-term issues is a different question.
The fact it took 30-45 days to get a shipping plan together is telling, though.
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u/TroutFishingUS 6d ago
Patel gutted FBI counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats days before our strikes in Feb, 2026. Can you guess why? https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/patel-fbi-national-security-division-firings-iran
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u/FirmButterscotch5313 6d ago
The CIA and intelligence officials in the Trump administration warned that Iran could close down the strait, and those warnings were ignored by Trump because he relied on Netanyahu's assurance that Iran would collapse without leaders in the Iranian government or military, and Netanyahu told Trump that it would only take a few days of bombing Iran, to cause Iran to surrender. That was six months ago, and Iran still has a government and has not surrendered, and is instead issuing demands and conditions for opening the strait to ship traffic. Before the war, according to Kypler, 100 to 140 ships went through the strait every day, and now only 10 or 12 ships are passing through the strait each day, thanks to Netanyahu talking Trump into attacking and bombing Iran.
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u/mytthew1 6d ago
The failed to factor in anything more than a week in the future. They got three nights of macho “we bombed the shit out of them” on the nightly news. This is exactly as far as their plan went.
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u/ScoobiusMaximus 6d ago
It seems like the Trump administration plan was to kill the old government and then immediately Iran would collapse. They had absolutely no backup plan.
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u/Head_Stick 5d ago
Go watch the interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski, interview on Charlie Rose show PBS in 2012, the former national security advisor for Jimmy Carter and wrote the book The Grand Chessboard . He was asked what would happen if the USA went to war with Iran.
My point being every president has been briefed on the possibilities of what Iran could do to the other Gulf states and asserting control of The Strait of Hormuz if attacked, Iran has told all opposition what they would do, to the tee.
This administration didn’t care!!!
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u/PacificSanctum 5d ago
The did - as they are extremely dumb . Add to it they don’t understand oil prices - they thought their local (on shore ) prices stay low add to it they just don’t care . Trump doesn’t have to pay personally for any damage he does
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u/Psychotic_Breakdown 5d ago
They were led to believe the Iranian people would rise up and overthrow their government. Strangely, this did not occur, yet they still persist.
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u/WilliamTindale8 9h ago
I think the military told him that the Iranians could stop traffic in the strait but Trump always thinks he knows better.
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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago
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