Dark Ages Today

Today, though, Trump’s war on Iran is demanding a resolution, and it is crystal clear that the Iranians believe they are in a position to dictate terms to the United States.

Iran and Oman have been negotiating terms for travel through the Strait of Hormuz, which runs between the two countries. Iran closed the strait when Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026. Before the war, more than 20% of the world’s shipborne oil and even more than that of its shipborne fertilizer traveled through the strait, and their loss has dramatically impacted the global economy. Farmers around the world are having trouble obtaining fertilizer, and the price of oil—and the corresponding price of gasoline and diesel—have jumped dramatically.

On Saturday, Iranian officials laid out a series of demands the U.S. must meet before they will reopen the strait. They say the U.S. must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw the U.S. military, “permanently end the war against Iran and Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq,” and “never threaten nor insult Iran in any language,” essentially gagging Trump. They want an end to sanctions on Iran and the release of frozen Iranian assets. And they want reparations. All up front, as conditions for reopening the strait.

In the past, sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets were made conditional on an end to Iran’s nuclear program. Now such a negotiation doesn’t even appear to be on the table. And Iran is asserting its right to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for global trade. Tolls on ships using the strait would provide significant funding for the Iranian regime.

Foreign policy scholar and diplomat Philip Gordon, who served in the Biden White House, wrote: “U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”

He suggested that “in other circumstances Iran’s closure of [the] Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors’ civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response—like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s—that led to the JCPOA.”

“Instead,” he wrote, “[the] US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.”

Yesterday Trump told Barak Ravid of Axios, “We are low-keying it,” explaining: “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” He stressed that Iran’s in an economic crisis and that since oil prices have come down slightly in the U.S., gas prices have eased enough to provide some relief to consumers.

“It will work out,” Trump told Ravid. “It always works out. It’s like a chess game.”

But Trump’s mood had changed by today. At 12:31, he claimed Iranian negotiators had never before mentioned reparations for the damage done to Iran during the five month conflict, although the Memorandum of Understanding he signed on June 17 clearly calls for the establishment of a $300 billion fund for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development, suggesting either that Trump has forgotten what was in the agreement or didn’t know.

Trump posted: “I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous…. I have instructed my representatives to put this firmly into any, and all, future negotiations.” An hour later, he added: “Also,…Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza!”

Later, when a reporter asked Trump when he thought the Strait of Hormuz would open, he answered: “Well, it’s open now…. It’s open now. Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy.”

Iran apparently wants its part of the agreement up front because it doesn’t trust Trump to follow through once the strait is reopened, and there is reason to doubt that he will—or can—deliver on his promises. Yesterday, Netanyahu openly rejected the plan that Trump announced as a done deal less than two weeks ago to end the fighting in Gaza.

On July 30, Trump posted that his “Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza” in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli forces there. “This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” Trump wrote. “One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity,” he wrote, but now there was a “historic breakthrough.” “CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!” he wrote.

At the time, Netanyahu expressed skepticism, but today he openly broke with Trump. When asked about the rejection, the White House told reporters to talk to the Board of Peace.

While much of the focus of the media has been on Trump’s bumbling in the Middle East, the administration has been busy working to reshape Latin American countries into right-wing protectorates of the United States. In Colombia’s recent election, Trump endorsed a right-wing millionaire lawyer who had never before run for office, Abelardo de la Espriella. De la Espriella holds both U.S. and Colombian citizenship and is a Republican who supports Trump.

De la Espriella won a close election, and as soon as he took office, replacing the leftist

Gustavo Petro, the U.S. pledged $1 billion in assistance to Colombia, “as part of a security package to support President (Abelardo) de la Esprilla’s administration in achieving our shared goals,” the White House said.

Tyler Pager, Julian E. Barnes, and Frances Robles of the New York Times reported on August 7 that the administration has been looking for a similarly cooperative leader for Cuba. In a search for “more regime alteration than regime change,” they write, the administration has “pressed its spy agencies to identify someone in the mold of Delcy Rodríguez, who became Venezuela’s interim president after U.S. forces captured the previous leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January. U.S. officials viewed Ms. Rodríguez as a pragmatist who could seamlessly assume power and would be willing to work closely with them,” the journalists report.

The plan appears to be to get Cuba to open its economy to private enterprise including U.S. businesses, buy oil from the U.S., and push out the Russian and Chinese intelligence operatives there. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Pager, Barnes, and Robles note, has secretly established a Cuba task force.

Their New York Times colleague Adam Entous reported on August 5 that the task force includes “case officers who recruit and manage spies, intelligence analysts, officers who conduct cyberoperations and officers who specialize in covert influence operations.” Sources told Entous that the plan appeared intended to create rifts among those in Cuba’s political elite to enable the rise of leaders willing to agree to Trump’s demands.

Trump’s assumption of control over Venezuela seems to have been the model for attempts to take over other countries. Last September the Trump administration began strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that Trump claimed—without evidence—were being operated by narcoterrorists from Venezuela. Then the U.S. began to seize vessels allegedly carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil. On January 3, 2026, in a nighttime raid, the Trump administration conducted airstrikes in Venezuela and removed Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, taking them to New York to face federal narcoterrorism and drug-trafficking charges.

Although opponents of Maduro, who had seized power after losing a presidential election, cheered the raid in the belief that Trump would help them put opposition candidate Edmundo González in power—exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal after the raid in an apparent attempt to create good will—in fact the administration supported Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. On January 5 it formally recognized her as Venezuela’s head of state.

Venezuela’s high court disagreed. It called Maduro’s absence a “kidnapping” and determined that under the country’s constitution, Rodríguez could act as president for 90 days, a period the National Assembly could extend for another 90 days. But if Maduro didn’t return after either 90 or 180 days, the absence must be considered permanent. At that point, the constitution requires elections to be held in 30 days.

When Rodríguez’s first 90 days were over, there was no public announcement that the National Assembly, which is controlled by her political party, had extended her acting presidency. July 3 marked 180 days since Maduro’s kidnapping.

As Antonio María Delgado of the Miami Herald reported, in late July the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to dismiss a lawsuit filed by three Americans against Rodríguez accusing the Maduro government, which was well known for human rights abuses, of torture. The Justice Department called for the dismissal on the grounds that Rodríguez is entitled to immunity as Venezuela’s head of state, thus underscoring that Trump intends for her to run the country. Delgado called it an “extraordinary step.”

Negotiations are underway for a new election, but opposition leader Machado has been excluded from them. On August 6, seven Democratic senators led by Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reiterating that Rodríguez is still the acting president rather than the head of state,and putting the administration on notice that its “increased support of the same officials who contributed to the Venezuelan government’s lengthy and well-documented record of human rights abuses and violations is alarming, and we urge the State Department to re-commit to its long-standing practice of calling attention to human rights violations committed by the Venezuelan regime and exerting pressure on regime officials to end these abuses.”

An exclusive story tonight by Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Andrew Ba Tran, and Joyce Sohyun Lee in the Washington Post revealed the utter cowardice behind Trump’s authoritarian aspirations.

Leaving Türkiye on July 8 after the NATO summit, the day after he had renewed strikes on Iran, Trump made a show of switching from the newly outfitted plane given to the U.S. by Qatar to an older plane that had served as Air Force One before Trump got the Qatari jet. The journalists who were traveling with the president and some of the White House staff moved with the president to the older plane for the leg of the trip that would take them to Britain.

But the journalists report that Trump and some of his aides secretly left the older plane in a container lowered into an airport catering truck and were transferred to a smaller plane for the trip. There had apparently been credible Iranian threats against Trump’s life, and so officials turned to a plan to hide him, even from senior U.S. officials. To do so, they left the journalists and staff on the plane that would use the Air Force One call sign, turning them into a decoy for an Iranian strike. White House staffers instructed journalists to lower their shades when they entered the plane.

Trump secretly reboarded the bigger plane in Britain and was filmed coming down its stairs, suggesting he had been on the flight. Then he boarded the Qatari jet, along with the press pool and the staffers who had been on Air Force One, for the trip from Türkiye. On the flight, Trump briefly spoke to reporters, who asked why they had been asked to lower their window shades on the previous flight.

It was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with,” Trump said. He added that there are threats against his life “all the time” and that “I’m number one on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right?” “Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”

Bluesky national security commenter Angry Staffer wrote: “So, I completely understand secreting POTUS away from a credible assassination attempt. But leaving the entire Air Force One crew, press pool, etc. to play decoy is some sick shit.”