Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to the 5th millennium BC. Archeologists spend a lot of time there. It appears that President Donald Trump will allow it to live a little while longer. It could be argued that there never has been a ceasefire that has been permanent in the Mid-east as we are once again fighting there. It is a matter of the duration. Some time-outs last hours and others years but all have been used to re-arm before eventually going at it again. There will be a dust-up or two expected yet, but Trump wants to wind this one up, declare victory and enjoy the relief rally in equities and his forecast elevator shaft drop in oil prices. Israel would prefer to keep fighting. Iran’s regime had a change in generations forced upon them as new blood steps up to replace the old killed in the onset of the conflict … but the evil ideology remains. I am disappointed that little has likely changed relative to the freedom of the Iranian people. Iran would prefer not to have its civilization ended but keeping the U.S. stuck in the Gulf would give Trump a political migraine. They are in control of the strait and that gives them the leverage.

Trump’s threat “to eliminate the civilization of Iran so that it can never recover” frankly shocked the world and generated blow-back from all corners, including some from his base. It would appear that the threatened Epic Fury 2.0 will have severely damaged U.S. soft power projection throughout the world. This will impact trade agreements being renegotiated. Boycotts of U.S. trade will expand. That blowback caused him to make the decision to end the war without many of his objectives having been achieved. He may huff and puff some more, but the war is likely over with, as the odds of him starting again in two weeks is extremely low. He will want the positive market response to his ending the war to protract into weeks and months. He may or may not get the nuclear material that Iran still has that after the 12-day war he said had been obliterated. Ironically this nuclear material will be part of the terms being negotiated to end this one. Iran has drone manufacturing capability in Tajikistan. Trump threatened a 50% tariff on any country helping Iran with arms. Tajikistan and North Korea are pretty much immune from such a threat. Russia may be too. What if North Korea supplies Iran with a nuclear weapon?

The result of the war will not be measured in how many targets were destroyed as the War Department prefers, Iranian ships sunk or air defenses decimated but by who controls the Strait of Hormuz. They do. The anticipated cost of our taking the strait was too much for the administration to bear so they passed. The cost could have been a thousand casualties, bringing bodies of our fallen heroes to Dover, plane load after plane load. Given Trump’s claim that we need none of the oil from the gulf, such a loss would not have been tolerated by the U.S. public. That is why the president chose as he did. Our Gulf allies were big losers in this war with hundreds of billions in infrastructure of all kinds destroyed and their business model disrupted. They lost their luster and it will take years for them to recover. Gulf allies have to be greatly disgruntled with the Trump family. Qatar will probably ask Trump for its $400 million airplane back.

Was the new target list of power plants and bridges a war crime? Many say that it would have been, causing heated dissension within the military and legal community. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and the president welcomed him with a red carpet in Alaska. He got nothing from Putin for that. Obviously, president Trump has a different view of such things. This war will also come with a cost. Trump is asking $200 billion in special funding from Congress to support the cost of the war. In addition, he is boosting his defense budget 44% to $1.5 trillion offsetting some of the increase in military spending with cuts in social spending. No real concern for the growing deficit is being shown. This country is careening toward fiscal insolvency, which Trump plans to solve with a new federal chairman.

The decision to end the war may have avoided Armageddon. If Trump had followed through and the U.S. military had accepted his orders as being legal orders to wipe out the civilization of Iran, the entire industry of the Mideast could have been destroyed. Iran will not go down easy and they would have executed an eye for an eye-tooth for a tooth vow for generations, if need be, to expand the stone age to include everyone they could include. Trump chose wisely for all of our sakes.

Iran is in control of the strait, and while it agrees to allow transit, it will happen under their terms. All ships go through their tollbooth, a channel between two islands in their territorial waters that they control, not the commercial channel. Iran was allowed to sell its oil at inflated prices during the war (so was Russia) and will continue to market its oil unimpeded. They are also expected to charge a transit fee reportedly up to $2 million per vessel ($1 barrel paid in bitcoin) so the strait will become a revenue generating cash register for Iran. This violates international nautical treaty, but they can until someone stops them. This will raise costs of fertilizer, aluminum, helium, sulfur, LNG and inputs that supply chains need. Brazil will want fertilizer to get moving to get to Brazil before the next planting season in September. Brazil will also be able to freely deliver corn sold to Iran.

When the market focusses on economic conditions post-war, it may be sobered again. The world economy is really disrupted and it will not recover quickly. Iran’s bridges may not have been bombed but there sure as heck have been many bridges broken in relations between the U.S. and its traditional allies, having become as estranged as they ever have been since WW II. His threat of obliterating the Iranian civilization will go down in history with statements like Franklin Roosevelt’s, “Yesterday, December 7th 1941, a date that will live in infamy.” The U.S. will no longer be seen as “the Shining City on a Hill” by the world civilization. Trump complains that Japan, Australia and NATO did not come to help us. NATO is a military defense pact not a military offense pack. They had no obligation under NATO to come help him in his war of choice that they were not consulted over. He put tariffs deemed illegal by SCOTUS on them, demands trillions in investment from them and then goes to war cutting off their energy supplies. Not hard to see why they would be angry with us and intend to revisit trade agreements. This war is only over if Iran wants it to be. Do they?