As the war in the Strait of Hormuz was going into its eighth week and a third U.S. aircraft carrier was heading into the region (part of a fleet of 19 U.S. naval vessels there and seven more in the Indian Ocean), reporters asked President Trump how long he was ready to wait for Iran to respond to his all-American ceasefire proposal. His response: "Don't rush me. We were in Vietnam, like, for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years " I've been doing this for six weeks."
Reminded that he had predicted the war would end in four to six weeks, he added: "Well, I hoped that, but I took a little break." Give Donald Trump some credit. When it came to that classic nightmare of a war in Vietnam, it took the French military and then the American one years to turn it into what seemed like the ultimate military quagmire, while Trump has created his version of such a quagmire with Iran in mere weeks, which should be seen as a genuine accomplishment. As Suzanne Maloney, Iran specialist and vice president of the Brookings Institution, put it recently, "The speed with which this became a quagmire for the United States has been, also, quite stunning." Stunning, indeed!
And the American public evidently thinks so, too. After all, in a CBS News poll relatively early in April, when asked to express their feelings about the war, 68% of Americans were already worried, 57% stressed, and 54% angry, while only 32% were confident and 29% proud. And with that and more in mind, let TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, who runs the remarkable (and must-read) Informed Comment website, take you into a war in which, as the title of his piece suggests, the only likely winner may be the electric car. Tom
The Electric Car Is the Only Winner in the Latest Iran War
The Hormuz Choke Point and the Twilight of Petroleum
By Juan Cole
After British troops had beaten German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's tank forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt on November 4, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning."
The same might now be said about humanity's struggle to defeat the dire threat of global climate change caused by our never-ending burning of fossil fuels. The illegal war of aggression on Iran, abruptly launched on February 28, 2026, by the governments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, has indeed provoked a global energy crisis of a unique kind. The Iranians, of course, responded by imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz that promptly removed about 11% to 13% of all petroleum from the world market, day after day, week after week, setting off a cascade of steeply rising prices for diesel fuel, gasoline, and natural gas.
Donald Trump's brilliant idea of joining the blockade of that Strait should be considered the equivalent of coming to the aid of a strangulation victim by pressing a pillow over his or her face. The shortages hit first in Asia (particularly reliant on fuel flows from the Strait of Hormuz) and Africa and then in Europe. The German air carrier Lufthansa only recently cut 20,000 summer flights for fear of fuel shortages (and it will undoubtedly prove all too typical). Nor will the U.S., despite having its own supplies of oil, escape such negative developments. While there have been oil price crunches before, as in the 1970s and 1980s, this one is different. It's a watershed moment globally, heralding the Ragnarök -- the Norse "twilight of the gods" -- of petroleum.
Forced to Run on One Engine
While American drivers have been complaining this spring about high prices at the pump, in the Netherlands and Denmark consumers are already paying the stunning equivalent of around $10 a gallon. In Asia, where reliance on petroleum that travels through the Strait of Hormuz is enormous, the situation is far worse, since there are already distinct shortages of fuel of a staggering and still growing kind. Philippines President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., recently declared a national energy emergency, as his country had only a little over a month's worth of petroleum left. Hundreds of gas stations, nearly 3% of the country's total, announced temporary closures, resulting in long lines at those that remained open.
South Korea, which unwisely dragged its feet when it came to turning to green energy, is now scrambling to find just three months' supply of petroleum from non-Hormuz sources, but the world's 10th-largest economy faces a potential economic cataclysm. The government has already restricted parking for commuters. The rise in gasoline costs has led many consumers to simply stay home if they can, spurring a buying spree of novels and video games. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, a human rights lawyer, implicitly blamed Israel's blatant disregard for International Humanitarian Law for the calamity, engaging in a days-long internet flame war with Tel Aviv in early April.
In Bangladesh, the state-owned Eastern Refinery has been forced to close due to a lack of crude oil to process. Meanwhile, the government has allowed gasoline and diesel prices to rise by 11% to 15%, putting pressure on the costs of transportation, agricultural production, and consumer items, while creating endless lines for what gasoline remains. With boat operators, ferries, and fishing boats unable to secure enough diesel fuel for their motors, a whole range of livelihoods are being hurt. As Al Jazeera reported, Bangladeshi ferry operator Abir Hussain typically offered this complaint: "We are struggling to maintain our regular schedule. We are forced to run on just one engine to conserve diesel, due to the fuel shortages."
Heavily dependent on fossil gas for its electricity plants, Bangladesh has already suffered widespread outages, harming factories and schools -- and, of course, even if the Strait of Hormuz were to reopen soon, the pain throughout Asia is likely to be long-lasting.
Stagflation
Oil price crises are hardly new. Because of a boycott of Europe and the United States by Arab oil producers during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and the rising power of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, the price of petroleum actually quadrupled between 1970 and 1980. That energy crisis produced economic malaise in the United States, where the economy became afflicted with "stagflation" -- both stagnation and inflation, two phenomena not usually found together.
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