No Safe Passage

Trump faces his own twin Odyssean perils, but he’s no sturdy or able captain.

LEFT: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a campaign and economic policy event. Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images. RIGHT: Ulysses (Odysseus) loses six of his companions by the Scylla. Wood engraving, published in 1880.

In Homer’s classic tale, Odysseus receives a warning before entering a dangerous strait: there is no safe passage without cost. To his left lies Scylla, a six-headed monster clinging to the rocks, ready to devour sailors straight off the deck. To his right swirls Charybdis, a whirlpool vast enough to swallow the entire vessel.

The goddess Circe instructs Odysseus: steer toward Scylla and accept the loss of sailors. He reluctantly obeys, losing six of his party to the creature. But a greater tragedy lies in store. Odysseus has lost the faith of his party, and with it, their obedience. When he is driven back into the strait, now alone in his odyssey, he clings to the branches of a fig tree above Charybdis, at the mercy of the churning waters.

Three months ago, Donald Trump sailed us all into a trap called the Strait of Hormuz. He promised the treacherous journey would take at most four or five weeks. Iran’s regime would fall, its people would rise up, any nuclear threat would be gone, and its oil resources would be ours to plunder.

Three months on, Trump’s hawkish officers rail against the course he has now set; a skeptical crew has stopped believing his promises of a safe harbor; and the world’s passengers hold collective dread of being pulled into a destructive, prolonged conflict. Our national ship remains stuck in that channel, with twin dangers looming.

As Trump vacillates between political ruin and a whirlpool of war, he still has no plan. And everyone on board knows it.

The twin dangers of Hormuz

For Trump, the Scylla of Hormuz is the giant loser of a “peace deal.” Steering toward it means accepting a brutal political accounting: Trump started a war that sent oil prices surging 40 percent above pre-war levels, drove inflation to its highest point in three years, and cost innocent lives, including 13 Americans and over 120 Iranian school children. Under the current proposal, Iran would be in a stronger position than it was in February. Even more humiliating for Trump, Iran’s uranium stockpile—which he repeatedly cited to justify the global economic pain inflicted by the war—would remain intact. And to top things off, Iran would retain de facto control of the Strait.

As devastating as that political cost, the Charybdis of Hormuz is an even more terrifying alternative: a full resumption of the war. It would require more U.S. military strikes and more economic pressure, all in the hopes of finishing what Operation Epic Fury started. But a wider conflagration risks pulling in an already volatile entire region, setting neighboring nations’ oil refineries ablaze, sending oil above $200 a barrel, and inflicting economic damage on an unprecedented scale. Once caught in its vortex, no one would return from that whirlpool, and Trump seems finally to recognize this.

Captain’s log: Temperamental

To understand how we got here, it’s instructive to briefly review Trump’s decisions so far. Collectively, they paint a picture of a leader who was expressly warned about the real dangers of the Strait, dismissed those warnings and sailed in anyway, and has been improvising catastrophically ever since.

Before the first bomb fell on February 28, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told Trump in multiple briefings that U.S. officials had long believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked. Trump acknowledged the risk but proceeded nonetheless, insisting that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the waterway. Besides, even if Iran tried to close the Strait, the U.S. military could handle it.

But the Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait, while Trump’s preference for a tight circle of close advisers sidelined any interagency debate over the potential economic fallout.

Iran, as we know, did not capitulate. And the U.S. military, for all its might, could not simply reopen the Strait. Within three weeks of the war’s start, the Trump regime got what it had apparently failed to anticipate: a global economic crisis, driven by Iran’s closure of the waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes.

Then came the “TACO” deadlines paired with ever-increasingly unhinged threats. On March 21, Trump posted that if Iran didn’t fully open the Strait within 48 hours, the U.S. would “hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first.” The deadline expired.

Two days later, Trump announced a five-day extension, citing productive conversations. Those five days expired.

On March 26, Trump paused “the period of Energy Plant destruction” by ten more days, to April 6 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

As the fourth deadline approached, Trump’s rhetoric reached Homeric levels. At a White House press conference, Trump threatened that “the entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”

Hours before the deadline, he posted on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Then he backed off. Again. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered him an off-ramp, what one account labeled “flattery as foreign policy.” Trump walked through it, agreeing to a two-week ceasefire. The choreographed quality of the intervention was not lost on observers: Sharif’s original announcement post briefly appeared with the suspect header “Draft - Pakistan’s PM Message on X” before being hastily deleted, leading many to wonder who really had drafted it. Iranian state TV immediately declared the ceasefire a “humiliating retreat.” The ceasefire unraveled almost immediately.

The pattern has repeated itself across twelve weeks: escalation, deadline, extension, announcement, collapse, reset. U.S. intelligence reports have since warned that Iran is unlikely to open the Strait any time soon because its grip on the world’s most vital oil artery is the only real leverage Iran has over the U.S. The war, intended to eradicate Iran’s military strength, may paradoxically have increased Iran’s regional sway.

This brings us to this morning. After Trump posted that negotiations were “proceeding nicely,” the U.S. military conducted overnight “self-defense” strikes against an enemy that Trump had claimed just a week earlier had been “virtually destroyed.” The U.S. targeted missile launch sites and boats attempting to place mines near the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state-linked media immediately labeled the strikes ceasefire violations. In a separate post, Trump warned the deal would have to be great “or, no Deal at all,” threatening to go “Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before.”

What’s on deck right now

Over the weekend, Trump announced on Truth Social that a deal had been “largely negotiated.” He cited a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end the war and reopen the Strait. The announcement had the now-familiar gap between his words and the facts.

According to Axios, which cited an unnamed U.S. official, the draft MOU involves a 60-day ceasefire extension during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened, Iran would be able to freely sell oil, and negotiations would be held on curbing Iran’s nuclear program. The draft reportedly includes commitments from Iran never to pursue nuclear weapons and to negotiate over a suspension of uranium enrichment and removal of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The U.S. would agree to negotiate over lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds, though those steps would only be implemented as part of a final, verifiably implemented agreement.

Skeptics immediately took note of what all that actually meant: The nuclear question would not be resolved. Instead, it would be left to some later unspecified negotiation. Nor would sanctions relief have been granted. That also remains TBD. The only concrete proposal on the table is a 60-day pause. Everything else is just a promise to talk about the harder parts later.

Iran’s read of the same framework is instructive. A senior Iranian source claimed that Tehran has not agreed to hand over its highly enriched uranium stockpile, and that Iran’s nuclear issue is not part of the preliminary agreement. Iran’s foreign ministry said Monday that the indirect talks are centered on ending aggression on all fronts, and that nuclear issues and management of the Strait of Hormuz are not part of the current negotiations.

The two sides, as we have seen before, are not describing the same agreement. They may not even be negotiating the same one. Iran’s Fars news agency dismissed Trump’s announcement as “incomplete and inconsistent with reality.” As of Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry acknowledged that “it is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion,” but said a signing was not imminent and accused Washington of “contradictions” and of shifting its positions.

The nuclear stockpile at the center of all this is not abstract. Iran currently holds 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity—a short technical step from the 90 percent weapons-grade level required for a nuclear weapon. The Trump regime ostensibly went to war, in significant part, to prevent Iran from crossing that threshold. The current framework, as Iran describes it, leaves that stockpile untouched and defers the conversation to a second phase that has not yet been scheduled.

Mutiny on deck

A number of Republican senators erupted over the reported terms of the deal. They are not wrong in their strategic assessment; they are simply trapped by it.

Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was formally treated as an international waterway. Iran monitored it, harassed shipping and intermittently intercepted vessels, but stopped short of asserting outright control. Now Tehran has moved from shadowing tankers to dictating terms. It now functions as the de facto gatekeeper of the shipping route, selectively deciding who passes and on what terms. As Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges told Reuters, this will be remembered as “Trump’s grave strategic miscalculation — one whose consequences reshaped the region in unintended ways.”

The hawkish officers on Trump’s deck have reached the same conclusion. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called Trump’s decision to strike Iran “the most consequential decision of his second term,” but warned that ending the war on the reported terms would be a failure. “If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz,” Cruz wrote, the outcome “would be a disastrous mistake.”

Per PBS News Hour, Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) warned that “the rumored 60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” Earlier in the week, Wicker had blamed Trump’s advisers for pushing the president toward “a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on,” rather than allowing him to “finish the job he started.”

Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) amplified the criticism by resharing Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) comments—a signal that the skepticism represents a significant bloc of Republican Senate opinion, not a handful of mavericks. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the framework “straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook,” comparing it directly to the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran that Trump spent his first term dismantling.

The White House response to its own party’s critics was immediate and characteristically unrestrained. White House communications director Steven Cheung fired back at Pompeo saying, “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f— he’s talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.” Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz piled on, responding to Cruz snidely, “No one asked you, bro. Stop trying to undermine the President and his administration.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more measured but no less pointed response, telling reporters that “no president has been stronger against Iran than Trump” and that his commitment to preventing a nuclear-armed Iran “shouldn’t be questioned by anybody.”

The critics were undeterred. Cruz posted that “young political grifters pushing Iran appeasement are not remotely helping the President.” Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has become one of Trump’s most persistent foreign policy critics, wrote on X that “if news reports about the impending Iran deal are correct, the ayatollahs will have won a significant victory. They will be back on the road to nuclear weapons, supporting global terrorism and repressing their own people.”

For all their bluster, Trump’s officers on deck remain in a trap they cannot escape. The party fears becoming the sacrificial vessel, politically devoured by Scylla from a terrible and humiliating deal. But they understand that there is no better deal to be had. Iran has spent three months demonstrating it will not surrender its uranium, relinquish control of the Strait or accept anything resembling defeat. Trump must get the Strait reopened before permanent damage to the global economy sets in.

Yet these officers stand on deck insisting their captain not sail toward Scylla, while offering no path that doesn’t pull the ship back into the whirlpool of war. And so long as they remain stuck, so are we.

The crew and the passengers

Below the officers’ arguments on deck, two other groups are living through this voyage.

The “crew”—among them military officers, market traders, oil analysts and corporate CFOs pricing fuel surcharges into their quarterly projections—have developed a precise and unsentimental relationship with the captain’s announcements. They have been through this cycle enough times that they have stopped pricing in what Trump says and started pricing in what Trump does. As NPR reported, investors have swung from hope that Trump and Iran will de-escalate the war, to panic when it appears that the conflict is heating up, and then back again when it does not. It’s a pattern that has repeated with each announced breakthrough and each subsequent collapse. The market’s credulity has begun to wear off.

While oil fell more than five percent on Sunday alone on progress signals, with Brent crude prices sliding to around $98 a barrel, it is still trading more than a third above its prewar price. It remains stuck at an elevated price because the two sides remain at loggerheads over the enriched uranium stockpile and the terms of the Strait’s reopening.

The passengers below deck include the U.S. electorate and consuming public. They were filling up their tanks for Memorial Day weekend and paying prices that have surged more than 40 percent above prewar levels. Gasoline could approach $5 per gallon in June if the Strait remains closed. Inflation is at its highest point in three years, driven by the spike in fuel costs. The OECD projects U.S. inflation could hit 4.2 percent this year if the disruption drags on, with GDP growth slowing to 2 percent in 2026 and further to 1.7 percent in 2027.

Then there are the ships that won’t come alongside to help. America’s closest allies have been standing off at a safe distance since February, watching through binoculars, urging diplomacy, and declining to enter the channel. France declared the war “is not ours.”

Britain acknowledged it had “taken a different position” from the U.S. and Israel on the “offensive operations.” Indeed, none of the G7 members participated in the offensive.

The high price of hubris

Homer told us what happened after Odysseus finally cleared the strait. Six of his party had been devoured by Scylla, and the rest had grown restless. They were warned by the gods not to slaughter the sacred cattle of the sun god, but they proceeded anyway, with hunger, exhaustion and the collapse of discipline doing what Scylla and Charybdis could not.

As punishment, Zeus destroyed the ship. Every last member of his party perished, and Odysseus had to survive on his own, the wreckage of his vessel now his life raft.

Yet to compare Trump to Odysseus is to flatter him beyond recognition. The figure from Greek mythology Trump more closely resembles is Phaethon, the vain mortal son of the sun god Helios, who demanded to drive his father’s celestial chariot across the sky to silence those who doubted his divine bloodline. His father warned him, begged him, enumerating every danger, every reason Phaethon was unqualified for the task.

Phaethon grabbed the reins anyway, certain that his stature accorded him what greater beings had mastered through long experience. He lost control almost immediately. The chariot lurched and careened. The earth scorched, and rivers boiled. Whole civilizations burned below while he clung to the reins. He was unable to halt the conflagration he’d lit, and unable to admit he never should have begun it.

Zeus finally struck him down with a thunderbolt, not to punish him, but to stop the terrible damage he was inflicting on everyone else.

Were this Ancient Greece, we’d say the gods are being sorely tested by Trump’s hubris and recklessness. And their patience is wearing thin.

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