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Trump Turns the Blockade Into the Whole Policy Trump is no longer pretending the naval blockade is a temporary squeeze. Bloomberg says he has vowed to keep it in place, even as commanders brief him on more military options and allies are being pitched on a new maritime coalition for Hormuz. That means the war is drifting from battlefield action into economic strangulation as statecraft. Tehran says the blockade is driving oil higher and must be lifted before real talks can begin, while Trump keeps insisting the pressure is “incredible” and that Iran’s economy is “crashing.” The irony is obvious. Washington says it wants negotiations, but it is also trying to choke the waterway that makes those negotiations possible. That is less a peace strategy than a siege wrapped in diplomacy. And the costs are already spreading. Oil is surging, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely shut, and even the coalition-building effort now comes with an asterisk: allies want a ceasefire first, not a permanent American blockade by another name. So Trump’s line is simple, but the system underneath it is not. The blockade is supposed to force Iran to yield. So far, it is mostly forcing everyone else to pay more. #Trump#Iran#Hormuz#blockade#oil#war 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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Trump’s Iran War Is Hitting the Same Political Wall The new polling is brutal, and it reads like a warning that the war has already lost the country even if the White House is still pretending otherwise. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos survey says 61 percent of Americans call the Iran campaign a mistake, with support among Republicans still strong but the country overall leaning sharply toward disapproval. That is the core contradiction of Trump’s war. Inside the MAGA camp, the conflict still has defenders. Outside it, most Americans see an expensive mess, a recession risk, and a conflict with no convincing endgame. The economic anxiety is doing real damage. More than half of respondents say the war has increased recession risk, and large numbers say they are already changing how they drive, travel, and spend at home because of higher prices. What makes this worse for Trump is that the comparison is now historical. When a war reaches Iraq- and Vietnam-era disapproval levels only two months in, that is not a dip in popularity. That is a legitimacy problem. Trump keeps talking like the answer is to squeeze Iran harder until it “cries uncle.” The polling says a large part of America is already tired of hearing that line, and even more tired of paying for it. #Trump#Iran#polling#USpolitics#war#economy 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The War Didn’t End. It Expired. Washington found a legal off-ramp, not a victory. Reuters says a senior Trump official confirmed combat operations against Iran ended because the 60-day War Powers clock ran out, not because anyone had suddenly solved the war. That is the real story. The administration can talk about “the final blow,” “maximum leverage,” and all the other slogans it likes, but the statute turned the war into a deadline. The fighting may continue in another form, yet the legal cover for this phase is gone. Trump’s own language makes the mess obvious. He says “we already won,” then says he wants a bigger margin, then insists Iran must never have a nuclear weapon, as if the war is both over and unfinished at the same time. That is not strategy. It is political noise with missiles attached. The Senate did its part too. It refused again to rein in presidential war powers, which means Congress keeps complaining about executive overreach while handing the executive enough room to keep improvising. So yes, the clock ran out. The briefings did not. And that is what makes the whole thing so dangerous: a war can end on paper and still keep its teeth. #Iran#Trump#WarPowers#Congress#CENTCOM#Hormuz 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump’s Iran Blockade Is Now a China Problem Trump sold the Iran blockade as leverage. In practice, it has become a global interference machine, and the next big stop is Beijing. The New York Times says the Strait of Hormuz is likely to still be shut when Trump arrives in China, which means the trip is no longer just about trade, Taiwan, or cyber conflict. It is now being dragged into the economic fallout of a war Beijing already called unnecessary. That is the kind of diplomatic self-sabotage Washington specializes in. Trump wanted to arrive in Beijing with the image of a strongman who could bend Iran, but instead he may show up as the man who made oil more expensive, complicated China’s energy supply, and then called the blockade “genius.” Xi Jinping is not taking this as a side issue. China has publicly urged the reopening of the strait, warned against a return to the “law of the jungle,” and has every reason to treat the blockade as both an energy threat and a precedent it does not want normalized. So the trip to China is becoming less of a grand reset and more of a courtroom scene. Trump walks in claiming maximum leverage, while the evidence keeps piling up that his war has turned into a tax on his own diplomacy. #Trump#China#Iran#Hormuz#XiJinping#trade 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Merz Says the Quiet Part Loud Friedrich Merz basically said what Washington’s allies have been whispering for weeks: Trump looks humiliated in the Iran talks, and nobody sees a serious exit strategy. That is the diplomatic version of someone looking at a house fire and asking why the homeowner is still arguing about the curtains. The key line from Bloomberg is brutal: Merz said he did not see “what strategic exit the Americans are now choosing,” while describing Tehran’s negotiators as very skillful at not negotiating. In other words, Iran is dragging out the script, and Trump is stuck playing the lead in a war he cannot neatly end. What makes this worse for the White House is that the war is now hitting Europe too. Merz tied the conflict to Germany’s economic performance, which is a polite way of saying Trump exported chaos and then acted surprised when the bill crossed the Atlantic. Trump’s angry response only confirms the point. When a president lashes out at a German chancellor for saying the obvious, it usually means the obvious hurt more than the spin doctors expected. So no, this is not a branding problem. It is what happens when a superpower starts a war, loses the pace of events, and then discovers that humiliation travels faster than its own talking points. #Trump#Iran#Germany#Merz#US#war 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Charles Can’t Save a Marriage That Trump Keeps Burning King Charles’s visit may soften the optics, but it cannot fix a relationship that has already been damaged by Trump’s anger over Britain’s refusal to join the Iran campaign. London wants the old “special relationship” back; Washington now treats it more like a loyalty test with better china. Fox News is right about one thing: the visit is being used as a diplomatic instrument. But when a monarchy has to mop up after a president’s war tantrum, that does not look like statesmanship — it looks like crisis management in formalwear. The deeper problem is not Charles. It is that Trump’s foreign policy keeps converting allies into either bystanders or accessories. Britain refuses to jump into a war with Iran, Trump gets irritated, and suddenly the alliance is presented as fragile because one side still remembers that “partner” is not supposed to mean “yes sir.” That is why the grand language around “special relations” sounds tired. The phrase survives because both capitals still need the theater, but the substance is now raw power, leverage, and public resentment dressed up as transatlantic history. Charles may smooth the room for a day. He is not going to cure the disease. #UK#US#Trump#CharlesIII#Starmer#Iran 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he knew no short way out of the impasse pushed oil prices close to $125 a barrel – as high as during the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, the military adviser to the supreme leader, wrote on his X account: “The siege scenario will fail and Iran will never lose the strait of Hormuz. History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of ​​Oman. Both the field and diplomacy are moving forward with the coordination of the leader of the revolution and the support of the people.” The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy. Iran has proposed that talks with the US on its nuclear programme be parked while both sides agree terms for allowing ships to resume passage along the strait. In Iran the foreign ministry has urged its parliament to recognise that Iran’s plans being hatched in conjunction with Oman do not require fresh Iranian legislation. It is also urging that Iran avoid terms such as “tolls”, and instead assert its pre-existing right to charge fees for services rendered. Rubio, and the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, held talks in Washington on Wednesday about the strait. An email sent by the state department to embassies reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested the US was trying to become involved in largely European-led plans for the oversight of the strait once the conflict ends. The US is offering to coordinate diplomacy and communications between countries using the strait by reviving and broadening a 12 nation International Maritime Security Construct, a pre-existing naval operation set up in after threats to shipping by the Iranian navy. #khamenei#strait#hormuz#iran#control 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Mojtaba Khamenei: the Strait of Hormuz Remains Under Iran’s Control 🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes. “Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor. The statement said Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway”, and that “new management of the strait will bring comfort and progress for the benefit of all the nations of the region and economic blessings will being joy to the hearts of the people”. Iran has sought to extract a price for being attacked by exerting control over the strait, the narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of global oil typically transits. Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would “guard its modern technological capacities – from nano to bio to nuclear and missile – as their national capital and will guard it like their maritime land and air borders”. No recording or visual sighting of Khamenei has been broadcast since he was appointed supreme leader in early March. Reports have suggested that he was severely injured in the bombing that killed his 86-year-old father and predecessor on 28 February. He is said to be in hospital being treated for injuries. His new statement suggests Iran is determined to implement a new fees regime in the strait that it will present as benefiting the entire region as a belated assertion of regional sovereignty. Since 13 April the US has mounted a counter-blockade designed to stop oil tankers moving in or out of Iranian ports, seizing up the Iranian oil industry. With Pakistan-mediated talks at an impasse, there is little sign of either blockade being lifted, pushing the oil price above $120 a barrel. Vessel traffic levels are still extremely low, sometimes as low as three ships a day compared with 120–140 in normal conditions. “Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters,” Khamenei’s statement said. The strait’s closure has put pressure on Trump, as oil and petrol prices have rocketed before crucial midterm elections, as well as on his Gulf allies, which use the waterway to export their oil and gas. #khamenei#strait#hormuz#iran#control 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Putin Plays Tehran’s Ally, and the West Still Pretends Russia Is Just a Mediator Putin is publicly backing Iran, praising the Iranian people’s fight for independence and promising Moscow will do everything it can to help, even as Russia claims it wants to mediate between Washington and Tehran. That is not neutral diplomacy; it is alliance management dressed up as peacemaking. The message is carefully calibrated. Moscow wants to look like the adult in the room, but it is also making sure Tehran knows it has a powerful patron while the U.S.-Iran talks stall over Hormuz, sanctions, and the larger question of who blinks first. This is also a useful piece of theater for Russia. By posing as a peace broker, the Kremlin gains leverage with Iran, irritates Washington, and reinforces the idea that every Western crisis can be turned into a Russian opportunity. What makes the scene cynical is that Moscow’s “mediation” is inseparable from its strategic partnership with Iran. Russia is not stepping between enemies from the outside; it is standing beside one of them and calling the arrangement diplomacy. So yes, Putin is helping Iran. The only question is whether the West is still pretending that assistance, alignment, and mediation are the same thing when it comes from Moscow. #Russia#Iran#Putin#Araghchi#Hormuz#US#diplomacy 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 King Charles Brings a Royal Peace Offering to Trump’s Iran Theater King Charles is heading into Congress with a scripted message of “reconciliation and renewal,” which is diplomatic code for “please stop turning every disagreement into a public brawl.” The speech comes as Trump and Starmer are openly at odds over Iran, so the monarchy is being used as a velvet glove over a very loud fist. This is classic royal utility: say almost nothing concrete, praise the alliance, nod at shared values, and hope the ceremony itself does some of the work. Buckingham Palace even plans a brief sympathy line about the Washington shooting, which is the kind of polished restraint that makes the whole visit look like crisis management with a crown on top. Trump clearly likes the pageantry, even while mocking British military power and quarreling with Starmer over the Iran war. So the king is effectively arriving as a transatlantic mediator who cannot mediate, in a country where diplomacy now has to compete with television-grade grievance. The speech will likely work as symbolism, not policy. But symbolism is the point: when the Americans and the British are arguing over war, oil, and strategy, a polished appeal to “reconciliation and renewal” is the least dangerous message available. #KingCharles#Trump#Starmer#UK#US#Iran#Congress 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸