March 25, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “Tea in the Sahara.”

The New Hotness? Dinner in Tehran, anyone?

Just a few days ago, President Miguel Díaz-Canel publicly admitted that his government had entered negotiations with the United States. Trump just gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio his 18th, or possibly his 27th, job: settle things in Cuba. The Cuban government announced various economic reforms, including opening up Cuban businesses to private investment by Cubans abroad. Why did that happen? “The economic opening comes amid unprecedented pressure by the Trump administration,” the Miami Herald reported. I knew it had to be something.

Meanwhile, in and around the Persian Gulf, the endgame is nigh. The US Navy is just about to be crushed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just kidding. That’s the headline that CNN and similar organs of anti-Trump animus have inscribed on their wish list. So far, my favorite chunk of surreality was the charge that neither Trump nor his military advisors anticipated that Iran would threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world’s black gold passes each day.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was right to call CNN’s story on the subject “patently ridiculous.” Iran has been periodically threatening to close the strait since 1979, when that malevolent lunatic Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran and plunged it into its current grotesque misogynistic dystopia.

Iran says the strait is closed. Scratch that.  It is open to all ships except those from Israel and the United States. Since only about a dozen US-flagged ships pass through the strait annually, that is not much of a burden. But then Saudi Arabia said (I translate freely from the Arabic): “Screw this. Bypass the Strait of Hormuz altogether. Sail up the Red Sea and we’ll load your oil at the port of Yanbu.” “Oh, wait,” quoth whatever Iranian authorities are still ambulatory, “we didn’t mean it. Come back!”

India is allegedly taking them up on the offer:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll