Trump says U.S. to be ‘Guardian of the Hormuz Strait,’ charge tolls
About a month ago, Donald Trump spoke at some length with The New York Times about the war in Iran and the tentative deal his administration had reached with officials in Tehran. At the time, the American president boasted that the agreement would ensure that the Strait of Hormuz was “permanently toll-free,” before turning his attention to the next round of diplomatic talks.
In fact, the Republican went on to tell the Times that if the next round of negotiations fell through, he was prepared to either renew the U.S. military offensive in Iran or make the United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20% of the region’s revenues.
It was a bizarre comment. What’s more, it was unclear whether he had just shared a passing thought or was articulating an actual policy idea. The Times report added at the time, “Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States would, if necessary, become a paid police force for the Middle East would be a striking, if very Trumpian, departure. The president would, in effect, be turning American protection of the region — and the U.S. nuclear umbrella — into a mercenary force, there in return for profit. The arrangement would essentially reject the post-World War II American tradition, in which the United States used its power to assure global peace and prosperity.”
A month later, the U.S.-Iran deal has effectively collapsed; Trump has declared the ceasefire “over”; both countries have renewed their military strikes; and the American president, who had said basically nothing about his “guardian” idea since mentioning it to the Times on June 14, has rediscovered the threat — and made it worse.
“We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Trump told Fox News on Monday morning. “We’ll become ‘the guardian of the strait.’ Maybe we’ll call it ‘the guardian angel of the strait.’ And we should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we’re going to be reimbursed. … We can’t be expected to do that for nothing. … We’re going to get paid for guarding it.”
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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