Now, that said, I can see everything from it ending pretty quickly—maybe as the economic damage spreads, it becomes clear that any sort of manipulation, like, hey, we almost have victory—which he tried a day ago, and it did seem to make markets bounce back for a very brief amount of time—can’t overcome the reality of the situation. And then maybe Trump says, okay, I’ll try to lie my way to claiming victory, saying there was great damage. And maybe then Israel goes along with that thinking, okay, it was a bigger version of the 12-day war and we weakened Iran a lot. And maybe even Iran says, okay, you know what, as long as we survived and we made our point and now everybody knows we have more leverage, okay, we’ll all stop.
So that could in theory happen—tomorrow, a few days. But part of the problem with that is it will have lasting economic damage for something that really doesn’t look like a success or a victory to anybody but the most hardcore Trump supporters and a few people who prioritize Israeli security above everything else. So other than that, I think that one’s more unlikely.
It also could go on for months, in one fashion or another. It could escalate to the United States introducing some ground troops, saying that is the only possible way to open the Strait of Hormuz. If it doesn’t work—if Iran doesn’t back down from cutting off that oil access—then we might see American, and perhaps even European and other forces try to force it open, and the war could still be going months from now. So I really don’t know. I just know that there is absolutely no path forward from here that is not highly disruptive and leaves things worse off than before he made this decision.
