by Geoff Vasil

When president Trump announced an American counter-blockade at the mouth of Hormuz, a wild-eyed Islamic Revolutionary Guard spokesman took to what’s left of Iranian state television to denounce the move as an “illegal act” and “piracy.”

Pretty rich coming from the country that attacked all its neighbors and at least three nominally European countries, then claimed it wasn’t attacking, then claimed it was only attacking US bases. It wasn’t. It was attacking energy and civilian sites in Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates, Oman, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Israel and Turkey. Then Iran attacked a Thai-flagged ship at Hormuz, then about 19 more in and around the area, saying it was allowing international shipping, but not for US allies.

The Iranian protection shakedown at Hormuz was a major issue at the pro forma alleged negotiations in Pakistan. Iran demanded the world cede the international waterway to Iran, and even demanded the UN Security Council approve that aggression by the Islamic Republican mafia. “Nice tanker ship. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Iran tells the world in its last gasp as some sort of regional power, regional bully. Iran isn’t like its neighbors, it’s more like the psychopathic neighbor whose ire all avoid.

Strangely enough UK prime minister Keir Starmer is running scared. He says he wants a diplomatic and political solution to Iran’s protection racket. He wants it so much he’s convened video group meetings with 30 other national leaders. France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz want the same thing. Let Iran run Hormuz, just please, lower how much we have to pay, $2 million per tanker is way too much for Iran’s good friends, neighbors and appeasers in the EU and NATO.

Now Starmer has spoken out against Trump’s counter-blockade, insisting international waterways must remain open to all traffic. That comes a week and a half after the UK decided it would interdict Russian commercial ships in “UK waters,” meaning the English Channel, an international waterway. Russia responded by sending military escorts with its tanker ships, and of course the English are powerless to do anything about it.

Starmer is apparently ready to recognize Iranian sovereignty over Hormuz and wants to “hand it back to its rightful owners,” a claim he made for Mauritius to take over the Chagos Islands and the US base at Diego Garcia there, to the cost of 60 billion pounds over 99 years the UK had agreed to pay Mauritius, which has no historical or geographical claim to the islands. Starmer has backed down on the Chagos deal, but there’s a pattern emerging here.

The pattern is the UK attempting to thwart their “special relationship” with the United States to spite Donald Trump. When Trump originally began making nice with Russia to end the war in the Ukraine, Starmer, Macron and the EU/NATO cabal in Europe stuck their foot in the door, a bureaucratic reflex to kill any peace deal by “death in committee.” Starmer’s response to the Iranian-American war is the same sort of response. He’s been calling for “de-escalation” even as he ignores Britain’s vital national interest in opening up Hormuz. The de-escalation mantra was taken up by Macron, Merz, von der Leyen and the rest. The European “allies” are pretending the cease-fire announced last week is “fragile” but viable. As in so many other cases, they have failed utterly to understand Trump’s strategy unless he takes them aside personally and explains it to them in language a toddler can comprehend.

Trump’s counter-blockade is obviously NOT a gambit for a better negotiating position in talks with the Iranian mafia comedian psychopaths. US forces are being arrayed for defeating the shooting gallery the Islamic Republic has spent years setting up in the northern bend of the strait. The US is obviously getting ready for a “scorched coast” approach to the Iranian mini-bases, drones, rockets and speedboats all along the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf. Kharg Island is a distraction and doesn’t matter one way or the other.

What will probably happen is that the EU and NATO members in Europe will continue to ignore their own vital national interests, relying on Trump to free Hormuz, while Saudi, UAE, Bahrain etc. will probably join the fray to take Hormuz. Iran will lose and will probably lose the territory around Hormuz to one of the Gulf states. UAE has a territorial dispute of longish-standing with Iran over several Gulf islands. Carving a piece out of Iran there and occupying it is probably the best way to insure freedom of navigation there. The multiple national vital interests of the parties involved are so significant that this makes sense to do.

When the Arab Gulf countries join hostilities, that leaves the US with a new set of better allies than NATO countries in Europe have been. Trump already sees them as dogs in the manger, now he’ll see them as disloyal and susceptible to Iranian propaganda even over the interests of their own countries. Europe has painted itself into a tighter corner than it ever has before. The EU has made itself irrelevant to the world and its national constituencies. All of the NATO members states with the possible exceptions of Turkey, Poland, maybe Lithuania and a few others have allowed their disdain for Donald Trump, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, to cloud basic strategic, economic and political thinking. Europe has no Plan B, there is no fallback ally and only economic malaise ahead based on lack of access to petroleum and natural gas and on hyperinflation.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily coincide with anyone else’s.