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Iran has a secret weapon for resisting Trump's blockade pressure

In the early weeks of his war against Iran, President Donald Trump declared that the Iranians had “no cards” to play. First, it turned out that Iran had a major card in the form of the Strait of Hormuz, which it blocked with major economic consequences for the world. Now more than six weeks later, Axios reports that “Iran has more cards to play” than the president would like to admit, specifically in relation to the U.S. attempt to impose its own blockade on the vital waterway.

As Axios notes, “Oil is Iran's economic lifeblood, and President Trump hopes blocking exports — which eventually causes production to halt — will force concessions.” But two key factors disrupt Trump’s plan.

First, Iran has more oil storage capacity than was thought. Estimates made during the first half of April asserted that the country could only store enough oil to maintain production for two weeks, but this has proven false. According to Antoine Halff, chief analyst with the climate and energy data analytics firm Kayrros, "Iran's experience in building stocks during the Covid crisis, available space at other facilities, and efforts to increase alternate storage and export facilities over the past 10 years” has readied it to hold a backstock of oil, which prolongs its ability to continue producing crude even if it’s barred from export. What’s more, Iran has 20 Very Large Crude Carriers capable of holding 2 million barrels that can be easily repurposed for use as floating storage, which would allow the country to continue production for another two months.

Speaking of ships, that brings the second issue: the ineffectiveness of the U.S. blockade. While it was assumed that Iran would be unable to export through the blockade, Iranian ships have been managing to make it through, maintaining a steady flow of revenue to the regime. At the same time, Iran has been smuggling oil overland and in smaller tankers that are harder to block.

"Even if the US blockade is completely successful — and, importantly, right now it isn't — IRGC would be able to rely on these alternatives to keep its troops paid and its position in Iran secure,” says Gregory Brew of the Eurasia Group.

While White House officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have asserted the blockade’s success, claiming Iran faces oil production shut-in, not only has the country managed to sell oil, but it has proven an ineffective means of forcing the regime to negotiate.

All of this means that the Iranian regime is better equipped to hold out in the face of U.S. pressure than was once thought. And as the war drags on, Americans are making it clear that they do not want it — and Trump is suffering at the polls as a result.

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Fox News host brings receipts to Trump's optimistic Iran claims

The Trump Administration has offered numerous, sometimes confused justifications for launching war against Iran, with one of the most oft-cited being the reduction of Iranian missile and drone capabilities. But while President Donald Trump has asserted that such programs have been “decimated,” one Fox News host said the government’s public claims of success don’t align with what’s being said behind closed doors.

“In a House Armed Services Subcommittee hearing last week, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency warned of Iran's remaining missile and drone capabilities, which runs counter to what top Pentagon officials have told the press during televised briefings at the Pentagon,” posted Fox Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffen. She attached a quote from Lieutenant General James Adams in which he revealed that, “Despite significant degradation of Iranian military capabilities through coalition strikes in operation Epic Fury, Tehran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAV's capable of threatening U.S. and partner forces throughout the region.”

Adams' admission contradicted a previous statement from Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who in early April declared, “All of these systems are gone.”

Griffen pointed out the inconsistency of these two messages over a retweet of a CBS article, in which it was revealed that Iran's military is more capable than the Trump administration is publicly acknowledging. While on Tuesday, Trump claimed, "We've taken out their navy, we've taken out their air force, we've taken out their leaders,” multiple U.S. officials told CBS that Iran has retained at least 60 percent of its navy, roughly two-thirds of its air force, and half its stockpile of ballistic missiles.

This isn’t the first time that Trump’s military claims have diverged from the facts on the ground. In early April, after declaring that the U.S. had “beaten and completely decimated Iran,” asserting that “they have no anti-aircraft equipment” and “their radar is 100 percent annihilated,” the Iranians successfully shot down two American fighter jets.

On Wednesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against the CBS article, posting that “the vast majority of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launcher vehicles, and long-range attack drones were destroyed,” “the Iranian navy was annihilated,” and that “Iran’s air forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant.”

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MAGA influencers declare Iran war 'a complete and total US defeat'

With a ceasefire in place that appears to have brought an end to President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, many political commentators from the right are declaring that “this is a complete and total US defeat.”

“There is no ambiguity here. It’s not debatable. It’s not subject to interpretation,” said far-right influencer Nick Fuentes on Wednesday. “We lost, decisively.”

Fuentes, a white nationalist who played a key role in developing Trump’s online base during the early years of his political career, has had an increasingly strained stance toward the president over the course of his second administration. In March, he finally broke with Trump entirely, telling his followers to “vote Democrat” over the decision to attack Iran.

Now, Fuentes is pointing out the flaws in the Trump Administration’s repeated assertions of victory.

“When we got into this conflict we had about five military objectives,” said Fuentes, noting that once Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, its reopening became another goal. “We did not achieve any of those things. There is no regime change. We did not suppress or destroy their capability to build and launch drones and missiles. We did not seize or in any way restrict their ability to enrich uranium. We did not meaningfully degrade or destroy the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and the regime remains intact.” And while the U.S. inflicted severe damage on the Iranian military, “they still maintain” wide-ranging military capabilities.

He’s far from the only one-diehard MAGA Trumpist to criticize the war.

Former-Trump loyalist and ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has inveighed against the president, labeling the war “unprovoked” and describing the Commander in Chief’s behavior as “evil and madness,” calling for his removal via the 25th Amendment. Former Fox host and Trump ally Tucker Carlson has called the war “vile on every level,” going so far as to say that White House staffers should reject the president’s orders and “figure out the codes” to the nuclear football so that Trump can use them. And far-right provocateur Alex Jones has criticized Trump’s willingness to prioritize war over domestic issues and speculated that the president has dementia.

“The 25th amendment needs to be invoked,” said ex-MAGA influencer Candace Owens. “He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.”

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Trump 'making up the plan' on Iran as he goes along: WH official

Over the course of the war on Iran, President Donald Trump’s mixed messaging has confused not only citizens, journalists and world leaders, but according to new reporting from Axios, his advisors are often “just as uncertain” about his intentions as everyone else.

Trump is well known for his unprepared media statements and dramatic proclamations via Truth Social, which can often contradict one another.

For example, on Tuesday he suggested that the U.S. would break off conflict with Iran without reopening the Strait of Hormuz, telling allies to “get your own oil.” At the same time, he asserted that Hormuz would open “automatically” after the U.S. departure. The following day, however, he claimed to have received a ceasefire request from “Iran’s New Regime President," but that no ceasefire would be considered until the Hormuz Strait is “open, free, and clear.”

There is no shortage of back and forth on the president’s position, even within a few short social media posts spanning a matter of hours. Depending on which Trump official you listen to, his chaotic messaging is either improvisation — a way to “keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity” — or all by design. Whatever the case, “his own team” is often just as confounded by his signals as everyone else.

According to Axios, Trump’s advisors themselves often waver on whether they think the president is considering major escalation or fast resolution, with one senior official saying, “Nobody knows in the end what he's really thinking.”

“They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along," said another.

But some Trump allies assert that the confusion is intentional. "That's the plan — for you to not have a clue," said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made similar claims, asserting, “The point is to be unpredictable ... certainly not let anybody know what you're willing to do or not do."

And as one official claimed, “This isn't 3D chess — it's 12-dimensional. He contradicts himself regularly, so nobody knows what he's thinking. It's on purpose."

But as Axios notes, the stakes are much higher than those during a game of chess, as “Trump's off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market.”

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US cadets were trapped as Trump bombed Iran: 'Why didn’t the administration think?'

As the first American bombs fell on Iran at the end of February, roughly half a dozen U.S. Merchant Marine cadets who were never warned of the attack suddenly found themselves trapped in the Persian Gulf. As the conflict raged around them — even once resulting in strikes against one of their ships — they were unable to evacuate for a month.

This information has emerged via NOTUS, which was told by multiple sources that at least five American ships working with the U.S. military were caught in the Gulf unaware that a war was starting. On two of these ships were students from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which trains officers for the U.S. military, the U.S. Merchant Marine, and various roles in the transportation industry.

During previous administrations, such vessels would have received a warning from the Department of Defense, but, said a source talking under the condition of anonymity, “Nobody told them. They were caught unawares. It was very strange that [officials] weren’t even given a whiff, weren’t even given an indication.”

The instant the war began, American ships operating in the Persian Gulf of Hormuz Strait became potential military targets, and one was even hit during the early days of the conflict, killing a dockworker and breaching the hull. According to sources, the lack of warning that would have allowed the ships to vacate the region frustrated not only the private companies that owned them but the Transportation Department officials tasked with overseeing the program.

“If they’d had even just a day’s notice, they could have gotten them out,” said one source.

Once the war began, the U.S. government made no efforts to evacuate Americans from the region. The five ships ended up berthing in allied harbors, where the cadets had to remain on board for several weeks before being extracted about a month into the war.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to be on one of those ships,” said Michael Roberts, a former executive at Crowley Maritime.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for the protection and prioritization of the “many, many” American sailors trapped in the region. He also criticized the Trump Administration for its poor planning.

“The idea that these ships would be stranded was absolutely foreseeable, and it seems to me there were ways to issue warnings to them to, you know, get the hell out of there,” said Blumenthal. “It was no secret that we were building a force there; it would have been prudent and reasonable to say to American-flagged ships with American citizens working on them, ‘You would be well advised to leave that area.’”

According to NOTUS, industry insiders were equally surprised that no warning came from the Pentagon.

“They literally do not think about the second-, third- or fourth-order implications,” one source said about the current DOD leadership. “This is the weirdest I have ever seen when it comes to a major operation like this. With everything else, we got at least some indication something might be happening.”

As another source from the Merchant Marine Academy put it, “Why didn’t the administration think this through, any of this?”

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Trump — not Iran — was 'begging' for a ceasefire: report

President Donald Trump, not Iran, is the one who was “begging” for a ceasefire, and had been for weeks before he announced a “double sided” end to hostilities late Tuesday evening, according to The New Republic, citing a report in the Financial Times.

That report reveals that “the Trump administration had been privately pushing for a ceasefire for weeks to alleviate the economic strain caused by Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, and depending on Pakistan for mediation.”

Citing five people familiar with a diplomatic back channel to Pakistan, which had been negotiating for peace between Iran and the U.S., Trump had been asking for a ceasefire since March 21, 22 days after he began the war.

“This contradicts virtually everything the Trump administration has claimed about Iran—that Trump’s constant bombings and threats of extinction caused a wounded, demoralized Iranian regime to limp to the negotiating table, desperate for a deal with the U.S.,” The New Republic reported.

“And just so we set the record straight,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting two weeks ago, “because I’ve been watching the Wall Street Journal’s fake news, and all these stories that get printed like, ‘Oh, I want to make a deal.’ They are begging to make a deal, not me.”

Trump went on to call Iran “lousy fighters” but “great negotiators” who “are begging to work out a deal.”

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that,” he continued. “I don’t know if we’re willing to do that.”

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Far-right influencer says MAGA divided and 'deeply furious' over Iran war

Opposition to President Donald Trump’s war on Iran is to be expected from Democrats and others on the left, but according to a popular far-right influencer, conservatives are divided and “deeply furious” over the conflict. And while much of the conservative messaging on social media has been supportive of the war, he claims that doesn’t align with the conservative discussion offline.

“I’ve never seen such a disconnect between the commentary on this site and what I hear in the real world,” posted Matt Walsh, a far-right commentator with over 4 million followers on X. “I’ve talked to dozens of normal conservatives in real life about the Iran war and I haven’t met a single one who’s actually enthusiastically in favor of it.”

He went on to say that while some conservatives he’d spoken with are “warily optimistic,” the rest are “not only opposed but deeply furious.” Many are afraid to express this fury, said Walsh, because they’re worried they’ll “be shouted down by throngs of alleged American conservatives who allegedly have wanted nothing more than for America to go to war with Iran.”

For Trump and the GOP, Walsh predicted, the political fallout could be catastrophic, as he claims to have spoken with many “VERY conservative lifelong Republican voters who are so furious and feel so betrayed that they’re planning to sit out the midterms…People are pissed.”

Walsh isn’t the only far-right media figure to express outrage over the war on Iran and thoughts on how it could impact the November elections.

Tucker Carlson has been an outspoken opponent of the war, notably giving a high-profile interview to ex-US National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who resigned over concerns about the conflict. Megyn Kelly has voiced criticism of the war but stops short of blaming Trump, claiming he was pushed toward it by more hawkish conservatives. And far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes has told his followers to boycott the midterms over the war.

Online personality Candace Owens agreed with a blunt assessment of the matter: “Not only is Trump losing the war, he has also completely forfeited his legacy and base.”

These far-right voices are speaking out as the latest polls show the stark unpopularity of Trump and his war. Over 60 percent of voters say they disapprove of the war, while the president’s approval rating has sunk to a historical low of just 33 percent.

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Expert warns Trump falling into 'escalation trap' as he sends 10,000 more troops to Iran

Since launching war against Iran, President Donald Trump has gradually shifted tens of thousands of troops to the Middle East. Now upon the latest news that he’s sent another 6,000 amidst failing peace negotiations, a respected international security expert has a warning for the president: be wary of the “escalation trap.”

“Victory rhetoric is noise — Troop movements are signal,” posted Robert A. Pape, Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago and author of two books on military strategy, warning that the “US is getting deeper into the Escalation Trap.”

Pape is referring to a pattern the U.S. has seen play out in conflicts around the world repeatedly over the past 80 years.

In the early years of the Vietnam War, for example, American troop numbers were low, growing from around 800 to 23,000 between 1959-1964 before exploding up to 184,000 one year later, reaching a high of nearly 540,000 in 1968, and finally withdrawing in 1973. Then in Afghanistan, U.S. troop levels grew gradually to 30,000 between 2002-2008, before leaping up to 110,000 by 2011, leaving after nearly 20 years in 2020. In the second Iraq War, the American military showed up in force more or less from the beginning in 2003, expected the conflict to end quickly, famously “surged” troop numbers up to nearly 170,000 four years later hoping to force a conclusion, but continued fighting for another several years.

Because of this legacy of escalatory wars that drag on for years of even decades, many in the U.S. have learned to be wary of such military adventures.

Now Trump is sending 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush along with another 4,200 amphibious troops arriving later in the month. That suggests an approaching coastal invasion, boots on the ground, and a protracted fight.

Regardless, Trump continues to declare that “we’ve won” while negotiations flounder as the end of the already tenuous two-week ceasefire approaches. Few seem to agree with the president, with even members of his own party expressing doubt over declaring "mission accomplished."

“We will not have won,” said Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Sunday, “until we have completely defanged the Iranian regime.” He offered a long list of conditions that he says would need to be met — from halting nuclear weapon production to reopening the Strait of Hormuz — admitting, “We have not yet finished the job.”

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'Definition of a cover-up': Officials say Trump White House is lying about Iran casualties

As of Wednesday, official figures released by the Department of Defense on casualties in Iran place the number of American service members wounded and killed at 411. But according to a new report from the Intercept, that number “erases” 15 wounded from the count, amounting to the very “definition of a cover-up.”

On the first day of the ceasefire, the Pentagon listed American casualties at 385, and though fighting was theoretically suspended, that gradually climbed to 428 by Monday. But the following day, that number dropped to 413 without explanation. The Pentagon has maintained that number since then, though a DOD count places it two lower.

When asked about the discrepancy, two Pentagon officials were unable to account for the change, with one claiming, “As soon as the duty officer comes back to their desk,” an explanation would be provided. But “a day, and multiple follow-ups, later, The Intercept has yet to receive an explanation of why 15 wounded personnel were scrubbed from the War Department’s casualty rolls.”

One U.S. official was blunt about their assessment of what they called a “casualty cover-up.”

“These numbers, it is obvious, are important. That they don’t want the public to have them says something,” said the official. “That’s the definition of a cover-up.”

According to two sources who worked with the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which is used to count casualties, it is unusual to see “lag between a casualty occurring in the field and its inclusion in the system.”

“We got it very quickly. We could report the number of casualties very fast,” Joan Crenshaw, who worked on DCAS during the war on terror said, explaining that the data was refreshed on a daily basis.

The Department of Defense and relevant administration officials have refused to address “hard questions about undercounts of dead and wounded personnel, the slow-walking of statistics, faulty accounting measures, and arcane casualty-counting procedures.” Aside from the erased wounded, The Intercept also asserts that the casualty numbers provided by the government “offer a distorted image of the conflict” as the DCAS tally doesn’t include “non-hostile injuries,” such as the over 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation and lacerations due to a fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford on March 12, as well as other injuries.

“That should have been entered into DCAS,” said Crenshaw. “My concern is why that piece is now missing.”

A second source who also worked on DCAS and spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed similar concerns, wondering what the Pentagon “had to hide.”

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Former White House official: Iran war has left US dangerously exposed to China

After two months of conflict with no end in sight, Former Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel says that the U.S. is now “poorer,” “less safe,” and “more vulnerable” to its adversaries. His comments were posted along with an article from the New York Times that details how the war has drained stockpiles of “critical, costly weapons.”

“It is difficult to come to any other conclusion,” writes Stengel, “than that this admin's war in Iran has made America less safe and more vulnerable in regard to much more powerful potential adversaries like China. The diminution of expensive and hard to replace munitions is also making us poorer: spending estimates of the war so far are over $30 billion. Iran's military budget, by the way, is 1% of ours.”

Stengel is basing his assertion on some striking numbers. In just two months, the U.S. has fired some 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles intended for a war with China, which represented about half the American stockpile. It’s used over 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, which is ten times what it buys in a year. More than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles have been fired at a price of $4 million each. And these and other weapons had to be rushed to the Middle East from Asia and Europe, which has “left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China.”

At the same time, while the U.S. has been burning through billions of dollars worth of multimillion-dollar weapons, Iran is using an asymmetric strategy that is exceptionally cheap by comparison.

“A Patriot missile costs between $4 and $4.5 million. An Iranian drone costs about $30,000-50,000,” noted Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) at a recent hearing. “It’s like shooting Ferraris at frisbees. We cannot match this asymmetrical warfare, and we can never make enough of these defensive munitions.”

In Europe, reports the New York Times, “the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of NATO from Russian aggression… But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia,” where the movement of forces and resources from the South China Sea has provided a strategic boon to China and North Korea.

During a Tuesday Senate hearing on the matter, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, acknowledged the issue of stockpile shortages by admitting that “there are finite limits to the magazine.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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Trump defense secretary 'said the quiet part out loud' about Iran ceasefire

With a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran set in place since Tuesday, the Trump administration is now asserting a total American victory, but according to many analysts, that supposed win is a lot more dubious than the White House claims.

Since the outset of fighting, President Donald Trump and his Cabinet have offered ever-shifting justifications for their war of choice. By just six days in, the Atlantic had counted no less than ten supposed rationales, from disrupting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to fulfilling “God’s purpose.” All told, they boiled down to a vague intention of taking down the Iranian regime and reducing the country’s ability to project power.

But as commentators have noted — including many from the MAGA-sphere — the outcome was in fact a disaster for the U.S., amounting to nothing short of a “surrender” on Trump’s part. As evidence of this, writes the Independent, look no further than the words of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Speaking at a press conference following the ceasefire announcement, Hegseth was asked, “Is this not the regime that was at war with us for 47 years?” The reporter was referencing the fact that not only had Iran’s regime maintained power, but the U.S. had managed to do little more than “replace the Ayatollah Khamenei with another Ayatollah Khamenei.”

In response, Hegseth claimed that Iran is certainly now run by “a new group of people,” noting that many leaders had been killed, “hence why [the new ones] came to the table.” So from the administration’s perspective, “the regime has been changed” because “it has a different interaction with the U.S.”

“So, OK, it’s not changed changed,” wrote the Independent, “as in a different outlook or a different way of governing or a different family in charge… It’s different because it’s the same regime but they agreed to a ceasefire with America after threats (and then declared victory themselves to their own population).”

This is not the first suggestion of the overblown nature of the Trump Administration’s regime change claims. Hegseth himself, later in the press conference, proposed that Iranians could now themselves rise up and tear down the regime. Not only does this ignore intelligence assessments that “anyone trying to revolt in Iran would simply be ‘slaughtered' by a regime showing no signs of cracking,” but it undercuts Hegseth's own assertion that there has been any significant leadership replacement.

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