A vacillating, befuddled, confused, meandering, occasionally dozing Donald Trump now thinks he's hosting "Deal or No Deal."

Photo: The Guardian

Donald J. Trump was sitting in the Oval Office today talking to members of the press.He told reporters that the U.S. would continue attacking Iran “a couple days longer” until “we knock out every single thing they have.”

Iran apparently had at least one Shahed 136 drone left, because that is what they probably employed to “knock out” the Kuwaiti oil tanker Al-Salmi, pictured above. The tanker is loaded with 2 million barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and was anchored off the coast of Dubai. The ship was destined for Qingdao, China. The oil on board the ship is worth approximately $200 million to $238 million, based respectively on oil prices of $100 a barrel to $119 a barrel, the price of Brent Crude at today’s closing.

Here is a photo of the drone that Iran likely used to hit the Al-Salmi today:

It’s powered by a 50 horsepower four-cylinder two-stroke engine. Iran stole the design from the German Limbach 550E engine and makes the engine domestically. The Shahed 136 can carry an explosive payload of about 200 pounds. Everything I’ve read about these things says that they cost between $20,000 and $50,000. Iran is said to have manufactured thousands of these drones. Here is a photograph of an underground Iranian drone factory:

The drones have basic internal guidance systems that use satellite navigation data from commercially available GPS satellites. Shahed drones have been made using processors from Texas Instruments and the same sort of 4G modems that you would find in a commercially available mobile phone. How do we know this? Some Iranian- made Shahed drones used by Russia in Ukraine failed to explode and were examined by Ukrainian technicians. The drones can fly between 600 and 900 miles, depending on their explosive payload, and are very, very accurate, as evidenced by the photo of the Al-Salmi, which shows heavy damage to the side of the vessel.

The Kuwaiti tanker was not the only vessel targeted by Iranian weapons today. A Greek container ship was narrowly missed by two drones off the coast of Saudi Arabia, and a Thai cargo ship was hit by a drone just outside of the Strait.

In the United Arab Emirates, eight ballistic missiles, four cruise missiles, and 36 drones launched from Iran were intercepted on Tuesday. Saudi Arabian air defenses shot down eight ballistic missiles and eight drones that originated in Iran. The airport in Erbil, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was hit by several missiles or drones fired by Iran.

So, that’s what’s happening in and around the Strait of Hormuz right now.

On Truth Social this morning, Trump was up to his customary threats against NATO allies. He wrote, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. Go get your own oil!”

By this afternoon, he was yapping incoherently about how and why and when the war might end. “We will be leaving very soon, within ​two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe ⁠three.” Asked by reporters what might bring about such an end to the war, Trump explained, with his usual precision, “When we feel that they are, for a long period of time, put into the stone ages and will not come up with a nuclear weapon, then we will leave whether we have a deal or not.”

Huh?

“It’s irrelevant now. It’s possible that we’ll have a deal because they want to make a deal. Iran doesn’t have to make a deal. It’s a new regime. They are much more accessible.”

Double huh?

At the Pentagon, Secretary of War or Defense or Cocktails or Sexual Assault Pete Hegseth clearly hadn’t heard that President Trump was no longer looking for a “deal” with Iran. He insisted that “if Iran is wise, it will cut a deal,” but if they don’t make a deal, “we will continue with even more intensity. We would much prefer to get a deal. We don’t want to do more militarily than we have to. But I didn’t mean it flippantly when I said that in the meantime, we’ll negotiate with bombs.”

Iran knows this. They are getting hit night and day with American bombs and missiles, and Iran is firing missiles and drones at ships and targets in Dubai, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq. Despite Trump’s bellowing about all the missile and drone facilities the U.S. had bombed, Iran has not shown any signs of running out of its arsenal of deadly weapons.

Meanwhile, about the “deal” that Trump insisted on, then said he didn’t want, then claimed is not necessary, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi today told Al Jazeera, “There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero. We don’t see honesty.”

Perhaps that is because the United States is “negotiating with bombs.” Meanwhile, oil tankers are on fire and missiles and drones are landing all over the Middle East and oil and gas prices going up, and the only regime change I can see on the horizon is right here at home in November when the Republican regime loses control of Congress.