Donald Trump and the Downfall of the American Empire?

Our war against Iran is now three weeks old and the Trump Administration has apparently reached the point of total desperation.

The best proof of this came late Friday when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that America would assist Iran in obtaining a massive inflow of additional funding for its war machine, thereby supporting Iranian efforts to kill American servicemen. Although reported in the New York Times, few have apparently noticed this bizarre development, or at least it has hardly received the attention it warranted.

The backstory was ironic. Soon after winning the White House in 2016, Trump tore up the existing American nuclear agreement with Iran, an agreement that imposed strict international monitoring to guarantee that the enrichment activities were solely for civilian purposes and could not be used to produce a nuclear weapon. Reneging upon the solemn treaty that our country had signed, Trump instead began imposing severe economic sanctions, intending to strangle Iran’s economy and prevent anyone from buying its oil. The Shallows: What the... Carr, Nicholas Check Amazon for Pricing.

Given America’s control over the existing dollar-based world financial system, this effort was largely successful and over the years these sanctions were steadily tightened, greatly reducing the oil sales that were the main source of Iran’s foreign exchange income. Eventually, nearly all of Iran’s oil was going to China while the only Chinese companies willing to buy it were refiners so small that they were not much impacted by American financial retaliation.

So during 2025 Trump boasted that he was strangling Iran, and to a considerable extent this was true. With Iran unable to sell much of its oil, the surplus was parked at sea in leased oil tankers until a buyer could somehow be found.

But this economic strangulation eventually proved too slow a process for our impatient president, and at the end of last month, he joined Israel in launching an all-out military attack on Iran, killing its top leadership and beginning a massive bombardment campaign that he was confident would end the war in total victory within just a few days.

For decades, the Iranians had warned that if their country were attacked by America, they would retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz to the tanker traffic of the Persian Gulf, and for decades all our intelligence and military analysts had confirmed that they would probably do exactly that. The loss of those energy supplies would produce global economic devastation, with America suffering along with everyone else. Therefore, all previous presidents had firmly resisted massive political pressure from Israel and the Israel Lobby for an American attack on Iran.

Trump, however, was made of sterner stuff. Although he had been warned of the dire global consequences of an Iranian blockade of that vital waterway, he was confident that the risks were negligible. After all, he and his Israeli partners would quickly win the war, forcing a total Iranian surrender within just a few days, long before any loss of oil traffic would have any impact.

Unfortunately for his strategy, such brash optimism proved mistaken, and after the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz to most oil shipments, the loss of supply quickly spiked oil prices to over $100 per barrel, inflicting considerable damage on the world economy. There were growing prospects of a severe global recession or worse.

Although Trump had never considered offering sanctions relief to Iran during peacetime, now that Iranians were killing Americans in wartime he did so, with his desperate need to put additional oil on the world markets overriding all other considerations. Thus Trump officials announced late on Friday that they were lifting all existing sanctions on Iran’s unsold oil, and urging their friends and allies to buy it, paying twice the original Iranian asking price.

According to the figures cited by the Trump Administration, this will provide the Iranians with an unexpected revenue windfall of $15 billion just when their war efforts most needed it. Since Iranian annual military spending had only been about $8 billion, that additional money could make a huge difference.

In all my reading of history, I’d never heard of a country heavily funding its own enemy in the middle of a bitter war, but the Trump Administration has become notorious for its many political innovations.

Although this latest strange Iran twist strongly suggested that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to America’s advantage,” it’s worth considering how we got to this point.

Once Trump had decided upon war against Iran, he cleverly used the ruse of ongoing peace negotiations to lull the Iranians into a false sense of temporary security. A diplomatic breakthrough was soon at hand, and Iran considered making huge concessions to avoid a devastating war with America. This naturally forced the top Iranian leadership to meet together in order to consider that momentous decision, and this meeting allowed them all to be killed in the surprise missile strike that constituted the official American declaration of war. A massive bombing campaign was simultaneously unleashed, targeting all of Iran’s military sites and its command infrastructure.

Offhand, I can’t think of any past historical example in which a major country had ever begun a war by successfully assassinating the entire top leadership of its adversary, and Trump clearly believed that this highly innovative military tactic would result in a quick and decisive victory. Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader was killed together with most of his family, as were dozens of his country’s topmost political and military leaders, with the New York Times publishing a convenient chart showing some of the most prominent victims.

Yet Trump turned out to be mistaken in the impact. Instead of immediately surrendering, the angry Iranians quickly launched their own retaliatory strikes against America’s regional bases, successfully inflicting far more damage than Trump or anyone else had ever expected. This included the destruction of most of our strategic radars in the region, systems that would require billions of dollars and years of time to replace. Indeed, since these radars relied upon large quantities of the Chinese-monopolized rare earths that America could no longer import for military purposes, their replacement might prove to be extremely difficult.

Even more importantly, the Iranians blocked the Strait of Hormuz, just as they had always threatened to do, and the sudden loss of oil shipments caused world prices to immediately rise, producing fears of a global economic disaster.

Roughly one-fifth of all natural gas exports also used that strategic waterway, and according to shipping brokers, half the world’s available LNG carriers are now trapped within the Persian Gulf, with energy prices in Europe having already spiked by 60%. Around one-third of all fertilizer also came from that source, and with the planting season soon to begin, experts feared that this sudden lack of fertilizer might produce a global famine.

Our blowhard president naturally spouted off that the war was almost over, resulting in a total American victory so the oil would very soon be flowing again. But the Iranians didn’t seem to agree, and since they controlled Hormuz and blocked most tankers and other cargo vessels from transiting the waterway, analysts gradually decided that they were probably correct. Mad in America: Bad Sc... Whitaker, Robert Check Amazon for Pricing.

Trump commanded the world’s most powerful navy, and in the weeks leading up to the American attack, he had deployed two of our carrier strike groups to the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. So with oil prices rising and stock prices falling, he repeatedly declared that he would send his warships to escort tankers through that important waterway. But he never actually did so.

I suspect that his Pentagon advisors informed him that any such ships he sent there would probably be sunk. The very rugged Iranian coastline ran more than a thousand miles and was honeycombed with well-hidden short-range missile batteries, drone launching sites, and old-fashioned artillery. The Iranians also possessed a full arsenal of underwater drones and speedboats equipped with anti-ship missiles. Iran had spent twenty or thirty years preparing for exactly this military contingency.

In their YouTube interviews, various knowledgeable military analysts described such an American naval campaign as “suicidal.” They even hoped that America’s top-ranking naval commanders would resign their positions rather than agree to carry out such a presidential order, sacrificing their careers and their pensions rather than dooming to death the many young American servicemen under their command. Unlike our ignorant president, these analysts were surely aware of a famous simulation exercise from the early 2000s.

As we were preparing to launch our ill-fated Iraq War, the Neocons dominating the Bush Administration were also heavily pressing for an attack against Iran, but the Pentagon’s Millennium Challenge 2002 wargames suggested that such an effort would be utterly disastrous. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper played the part of our Iranian adversaries and in that exercise he successfully sank an American aircraft carrier along with most of our other warships. In real life, that outcome would have led to 20,000 American dead during just a couple of days of combat, certainly representing the greatest military disaster in our entire national history.

Those wargames were held almost a quarter-century ago, long before the Iranians had acquired any of their most formidable current weapons such as highly accurate ballistic missiles or powerful drones. So the Iranians are vastly stronger today, and I think that our naval forces would probably suffer the total destruction suggested by that Pentagon exercise if Trump followed through on any attempt to break the Iranian blockade.

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