As the clock clicks down to Donald Trump’s latest doom-laden deadline for Iran – and the war drags into its sixth week – the US President is appearing ever more furious by the day
Donald Trump never went into the war with Iran thinking a stretch a water would end up being its decisive battleground.
While missiles rain down on Tehran, it is the economic shockwaves around the world caused by Tehran’s ongoing effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz which is the US President’s greatest challenge.
The latest expletive-ridden warning to Iran’s regime shows just how furious he is, and also how rattled.
The Strait – less than 30 nautical miles across at its narrowest – is through which around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas would flow in normal times.
While the US, and much of the West, are not heavily reliant on the shipments that come directly from the Gulf, they have been hit by soaring wholesale costs amid panic over what it means for the global economy.
Trump’s anger is not that shipments to the US have been hit, more that the consequences of higher prices are now impacting US voters.
But above all, his anger has been fuelled by the Iranian regime’s failure to capitulate, as he doubtless thought – and perhaps was told – would happen before launching attacks with Israel now almost six weeks ago.
The longer the war goes on, the longer Iran calls the tune on oil shipments, the more unhinged Trump appears to be.
The White House launched Operation Epic Fury to “obliterate Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and production capacity, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism will never acquire a nuclear weapon.”
Six weeks on and epic fury seems a good way to sum-up Trump’s anger levels at the state of affairs as they stand.
