Donald Trump has now told us for the 38th time that we are on the brink of a peace deal with Iran, a Memorandum of Understanding in which we both agree to turn the Strait of Hormuz back into a free passage zone, in which we agree to stage a next level of negotiation on Iran’s nuclear program, and in which we agree to immediately hand over some of the hundred billion dollars of Iranian money frozen in foreign bank accounts.
For once, our president may be right. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on state television Thursday June 11th that “a large part of the negotiating text has been finalized.” That may be true, but Iran wants its people to know something we might consider ridiculous: that Iran has won this war. And that we have lost it.
Iran’s military, the IRGC, says on Iran’s TV-news station Press TV that “Iran’s recent successful retaliatory operations against US aggression in the past 24 hours” have been successful. In fact, the IRGC declares that the wars with Israel and the United States over the past year, wars to destroy Iran’s nuclear centers and missile supplies, have “shifted the regional balance decisively in Iran’s favor.”
What’s more, the IRGC says Iran’s military remains “with fingers on the trigger, fully ready to deliver a decisive, immediate, painful, and regret-inducing response to any threat, aggression, or miscalculation by the enemy.” Continues the IRGC press release: “The Islamic Republic of Iran now stands in a more powerful, more prepared, and more deterrent position than ever before” with “more complete intelligence dominance over enemy movements.” What’s more, the IRGC warns about the Strait of Hormuz, “any attempt to threaten the strategic waterway would turn the region into ‘hell’ for the aggressors.”
The previous day. Wednesday night, June 10th. the US fired forty nine Tomahawk missiles at targets in Iran. And our president and his Secretary of War declared that there is more to come. Says Pete Hegseth, this is not to restart the war, but to establish the conditions for a deal. In other words, to put our president in a stronger negotiating position. To give him leverage. On Thursday June 11, Trump had another assault prepared, then decided to pull back. It worked. Iran has finally crept closer to a deal.
Since Wednesday June 3rd, the cease-fire with Iran had broken down in a highly combustible muddle. Then two American helicopter pilots were rescued after their forty million dollar Apache attack helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz. Their rescue made history. They were found and carried back to shore by a robot, a 24-foot-long self-driving speed boat that used its sensors to locate the men in the dark and carried them back to a place on shore where they could be winched up by a rescue helicopter.
We retaliated for the downing of the helicopter by striking Iranian radars, and anti-aircraft missiles, and drone command and control centers. In the process, Iran claims that we destroyed a reservoir in the Iranian province of Hormozgan province that gives 20,000 people drinking water. Iran called this a war crime. In fact, Iran already had huge problems with its water supply before the war began. Huge problems.
But there’s much bigger news than that.
Iran continues to claim the 104-mile-long Strait, the crucial strip of water through which 20% of the world’s oil flows. Or did flow until the Iran war stopped the 100 or more ships a day that had previously sailed through.
Today, oil is not flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. The president says oil IS flowing. “Millions and millions of gallons,” he says. But to keep the world well-oiled, over 100 ships used to pass through that strait every day. Now the number is down to less than ten.
What’s more, Iran appears to be charging each ship over a million dollars in fees to go through. That’s another consequence of Iran’s claiming ownership forever of the straits, ownership conferred by Allah, by God himself.
The result? The average American has paid more than an extra four hundred dollars in gas and groceries since this war began. And, as you know, it was announced this week that inflation had risen above 4.2%. A consequence of the Iranian choke hold at the Strait of Hormuz.
What’s more, in addition to claiming the straits of Hormuz as its own, Iran’s negotiators continue to claim that nuclear enrichment is a sovereign right, a right of every nation. A sovereign right they refuse to give up. And they continue to insist on getting back all of the hundred billion dollars of Iranian funds frozen in the world’s banks. Plus billions of dollars in reparations for all the Iranian buildings and property that have been destroyed.
The worst, is this: with the Straits of Hormuz, Iran now holds the throttle that controls the world’s economy. Iran now holds the cards.
______
About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
References:
Bearak, Max, Shirin Hakim, and Lara Jakes. “U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes for a Second Day.” New York Times, June 10, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/10/world/iran-war-trump-us.
Hartcher, Peter. “TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out on Foreign Policy Too.” Australian Financial Review, June 3, 2025. https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-always-chickens-out-on-foreign-policy-too-20250603-p5m4gk.
Jewish Insider. “CENTCOM Launches Second Night of Strikes in Iran.” June 10, 2026.https://jewishinsider.com/2026/06/centcom-launches-second-night-of-strikes-in-iran/.
New York Times. “Crew Is Rescued After U.S. Helicopter Goes Down Near Strait of Hormuz.” June 8, 2026.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/us/politics/us-helicopter-strait-of-hormuz.html.
NPR. “Trump Now Says a Peace Deal Will Be Announced ‘Soon’…” June 11, 2026.https://www.npr.org/2026/06/11/nx-s1-5854970/trump-iran-peace-deal-cancel-strikes.
Press TV. “IRGC: Iran Stronger Than Ever, Fingers on the Trigger…” June 11, 2026.https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/06/11/770279/.
U.S. Central Command. “U.S. Forces Complete Latest Strikes in Iran.” June 10, 2026. https://www.centcom.mil/.
World Israel News. “Trump Says Secret US Mission Secured Strait of Hormuz, Enabled Transit of 100 Million Barrels of Oil.” June 11, 2026. https://worldisraelnews.com/trump-says-secret-us-mission-secured-strait-of-hormuz-enabled-transit-of-100-million-barrels-of-oil/.
World Israel News. “US Launches Fresh Strikes on Iran After Trump, Hegseth Warnings.” June 11, 2026.https://worldisraelnews.com/us-launches-fresh-strikes-on-iran-after-trump-hegseth-warnings/.
World Israel News. “WATCH: Hegseth Says US Will Be Hitting Iran Hard Tonight.” June 10, 2026. https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-hegseth-says-us-will-be-hitting-iran-hard-tonight/.