As the US and Iran traded strikes over the past few days, it was easy to forget that only last month they signed the Islamabad Memorandum, which formalised the process of ending the war and established a 60-day period to negotiate a final deal. But the conflict, now five months old, feels like it has started and ended several times already. It has become a repetitive theatre, with each act indistinguishable from the last.
War status and costs
The war, initially expected to last a few weeks, is now in its sixth month. The US has expanded airstrikes on Iran in a "major military punishment" and Iran has struck US base targets. The Houthis have claimed a blockade over a second shipping chokepoint, extending the conflict from the Gulf to the Red Sea. Trump cannot exit the war without losing leverage, and he cannot escalate with a ground invasion due to potential heavy casualties. The deaths of 18 US troops and the Pentagon's apparent undercounting have triggered outrage.
The war has already cost the US almost $40bn, and the Pentagon is requesting another $67bn. The White House's fiscal year request to Congress is a colossal $1.5tn. Trump has said, "We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare … We have to take care of one thing: military protection."
Global energy impact
Oil broke $100 a barrel last week, and Brent oil prices are now almost 40% higher than before the war. A gallon of gasoline in the US costs 37% more, and diesel is 40% higher. In the UK, gas prices have soared nearly 50% just this month, with further increases expected at the pump in two weeks. This pattern is replicated worldwide, slamming energy consumption and government budgets. Protests over rising costs have paralysed transport from Ireland to Kenya.
Iran has struck desalination plants on which several Gulf countries depend. The war has also led to economic instability across the region.
Tariff policy and the new normal
Amid this volatile moment, Trump's tariff regime expired last week, replaced by new tariffs imposed on the grounds that countries were not doing enough to "tackle forced labour." The author dismisses this excuse as risible.
There is no amelioration of the cumulative impacts. No subsidy or cap can absorb the colossal shock at the heart of global energy transit. The author argues that we are all held hostage by a US administration that runs the country with ego and ignorance. Trump is described as wildly casual, cavalier, one moment bored and the next vexed, treating the world as a plaything.
Yoked to US hegemony, everyone counts the pennies, bodies, and tithes of the election of one man. The Iran war has become the most hazardous manifestation of this. Phantom breakthroughs and threats have given way to a chilling reality: an exorbitant war that rearranges geopolitics, domestic budgets, and household ones. Trump is stuck, unable to swallow the unpalatable price of peace, while everyone else pays the cost.
