Iran called Trump's bluff — and now he's spiraling and 'out of ideas': expert

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-war/ 

None of President Donald Trump's usual bailouts are coming after he launched a war on Iran, and the situation has quickly spiraled out of his control.

The 79-year-old president has long relied on lies, bluster and escalation to stay one step ahead of consequences in his business, political, and personal life, but those tactics are proving woefully ineffective against the global energy market that's been choked off by Iran in response to the military operation he impulsively authorized, wrote political scientist Nicholas Grossman for MS NOW.

"In response to the U.S.-Israeli attack, Iran played its biggest card, closing the Strait of Hormuz," wrote Grossman, a political science professor at the University of Illinois. "It’s a narrow choke point at the end of the Persian Gulf, and a kink in the waterway leaves it exposed to a lot of Iran’s coastline. About 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, and it isn’t hard for Iran to stop the traffic."