Confused closures and opaque openings: Continuing dramas in the Hormuz Strait

Reading messages from President Donald J. Trump is an exercise in taunting masochism.  It is one inflicted on commentators and the press corps the world over, and they are not better for it.  The latest – and here, the latest will become distant and dated shortly – is that the Strait of Hormuz, predictably controlled by Iran with devastating global effect, was to be reopened for commercial traffic under certain conditions.  Trump thought this undertaking absolute and indefinite, a rich suggestion coming from a man with such a fair-weather mind.  “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.  It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” This proved typically premature: within a matter […]