So Yeah, We’re Still Very Much at War With Iran
Trump also called negative media coverage of the war "almost treasonous," so there's that.
Photo via Unsplash, Michael Afonso Splinter Iran War
Entering this weekend, Iran controlled the vital and dormant Strait of Hormuz, but a faint glimmer of hope existed in the form of emergency talks during the two-week “ceasefire” between Iran and the U.S. to be presided over by our finest titans of diplomacy, including Vice President JD Vance and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. Smart money, notably, has not been buying the idea that this tenuous break in the fighting will hold for long.
As we wrap up the weekend, we now find things transformed, because … oh wait, Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz, and the peace talks failed in humiliating fashion after a 20-hour bargaining session, with Iran unwilling to give up its enriched uranium and nuclear program in particular. Wow, if only someone had been predicting that exact outcome last week when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had been mulling over commando raids to seize said uranium? We probably all could have saved a lot of time, yeah? Donald Trump, valuable asset to the diplomatic process that he surely is, was busy during all of these events attending a UFC fight with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, by the way. It’s good to see them taking vital negotiations seriously.
Now that both the U.S. and Iran have left peace talks in Islamabad empty handed, we must face down the reality of the situation: Time on the supposed “ceasefire” is ticking away, and the U.S. has seemingly decided to provoke the breaking of said ceasefire so we can simply resume our campaign of wanton airstrikes and bombings with no end in sight. Trump, who has doubled down on his now infamous (and aborted) promise that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” may want to take another crack at the war crimes that were denied to him, with Israel as his ever-enthusiastic cheerleader. The latter, by the way, is still in the midst of bombing countless civilians in Lebanon, another one of the key disagreements that seemingly scuttled the ceasefire and led to the Strait of Hormuz being closed just as quickly as it supposedly had opened. In the last week, only a small handful of ships have crossed the strait, possibly having paid the $2 million toll that Iran has been threatening to levy.
it’s july. gas is 15 dollars a gallon. trump’s double-blockade, triple-blockade, and quintuple-blockade of the strait of hormuz have all failed. in a 2 am post, he declares he has no choice but to enact the dreaded “infnity-plus-one” blockade….
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson.bsky.social) Apr 12, 2026 at 9:57 AM
Trump, suffice to say, isn’t having any of that. On Sunday, he rolled out of bed in a foul mood and announced that the U.S. would be establishing what he referred to as a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, although it’s entirely clear what exactly this is meant to accomplish. It is possible that Trump is implying that the U.S. navy will be individually escorting cargo and tanker ships through the strait, something that we have previously not committed to doing for fear of loss of life and the catastrophic PR disaster that would result if the navy is unable to protect those ships from Iranian drones or missiles. In a series of rambling Truth Social posts, Trump referred to the Iranians as being engaged in “world extortion” by closing the strait, and threatened that “Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”
Notably, however, Trump isn’t just threatening Iran–he’s also threatened any country shipping goods or oil through the strait that has potentially paid Iran’s toll for the right to do so. In the same Truth Social posting, the President claimed that the U.S. Navy would “seek and interdict” any vessel that passed through the strait after paying the fee to Iran, apparently intent on reestablishing the U.S. identity as the region’s most aggressive bully. So, uh … are we going to start capturing Chinese ships in the immediate future? Seems like there’s a global superpower that might not be so happy about that.
Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, continue to state that the strait is closed, with Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, boasting Sunday that the strait remains “firmly in our hands.”
“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.”
This might be the craziest part of all. I think he’s threatening to attack Chinese ships.
— Helen Kennedy (@helenkennedy.com) Apr 12, 2026 at 9:51 AM
The gambit here seems clear enough: Trump wants to simply forge ahead with forcing shipping through the strait, which may or may not be full of sea mines, and he’s hoping that there’s at least some chance that Iran will simply let it happen rather than allow open hostilities to resume. Of course, if Iran does fire on U.S. naval ships or oil tankers crossing the strait, it also gives Trump all the flimsy justification he’d ever need to redouble the bombing campaign and presumed ground invasion all over again. To a dementing mind, this scenario probably somehow looks like a win-win.
Because rest assured, Trump barely seems cognizant of what is even going on in this war. On Sunday, he boasted on Truth Social that following the weeks of U.S. strikes on Iran, “their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft and Radar are useless, Khomeini, and most of their “Leaders,” are dead, all because of their Nuclear ambition,” notably writing the wrong name for Iran’s leader … unless he thinks that Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, had been reanimated to serve as an opponent in this conflict. Likewise, Trump has boasted over the course of the weekend of “regime change” having already been achieved in Iran, despite the fact that the grand total of change so far has been the handing of power from deceased supreme leader Ali Khamenei to his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. If anything, the Iranian regime may in fact be more radical now than it was before the start of the war.
Congress, meanwhile, sits to the side as impotently as ever as its members attempt to wrap their heads around what is happening on the other side of the world. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wondered aloud Sunday on what a naval blockade was actually supposed to achieve, saying the following: “I don’t understand how blockading the strait is somehow going to push the Iranians into opening it. I don’t see the connection there.”
It’s all going great, in other words. Joining Maria Bartiromo on Fox News on Sunday morning, Trump dropped more pearls, such as saying that oil and gas prices “could be the same or maybe a little higher” by the time of November’s crucial midterm elections, while simultaneously vowing that the U.S. would definitely get “everything” it wants from Iran in the future. In a not-at-all ominous statement, he also called negative media coverage of the war by outlets like The New York Times and CNN as “almost treasonous.” If that’s the case, then surely the “almost” would probably be unnecessary for our coverage here.
Trump: “The New York Times is a fake paper. Just believe the opposite. It’s so sad when you look at CNN, the Times, ABC fake news, NBC fake news, it’s so sad. They report things they know are false. It’s almost treasonous actually, if you want to really know the truth. It’s almost treasonous.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Apr 12, 2026 at 10:18 AM
It shouldn’t need to be said, but we might as well reaffirm: These are the actions of a degraded mind that is now existing in perpetual panic mode, facing historically bad approval ratings and losing critical former supporters on a daily basis. What little chance there was to end the Iran War seems to have passed us by this weekend, with Trump instead committing both himself and our country to more global economic chaos for the foreseeable future. After presidencies that have been defined by a total lack of consequences for any of his choices, it seems as if Trump has finally found a topic he can’t simply bully into submission … but unfortunately, it’s not just him but all of us who now have to pay the price.
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