Five-day reprieve. Is it real surrender

Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum of the Hormuz blockade, and his five-day postponement of the attack by calling for productive dialogue, ostensibly wrapped up like a diplomatic victory, but in essence, it is different.

Iran has already laid out a few mines and even taken out a card to block the entire Persian Gulf, but the U.S. seems to have chosen to hide first amid a ballistic missile flying over Saudi Riyadh and an attack on Tehran.

This is a typical ‘hard speech → back out’ pattern,

With oil prices already soaring, currency and interest rate risks weighing on global supply chains, and the death toll on the Lebanon-Iran front has exceeded thousands, the Trump camp’s calculation is likely to be a avoidance of political headwinds from soaring domestic oil prices.

If Iran is hit by a power plant, the counter threat to reversely target desalination plants in Gulf countries and the power supply chain of U.S. military bases has worked.

In the game of mutual destruction of energy infrastructure, the U.S. took the brakes first.

After all, these five days are “buying time,” not the beginning of peace. If the war spreads, the entire Middle East will become a black hole that cannot release a drop of oil, and the repercussions could drive the global economy beyond the oil shock of the 70s.