Trump Confronts the Iranian Threat by Copying Them

By Noah Rothman

Monday, July 13, 2026

 

By now, it shouldn’t be hard for even the staunchest supporters of President Trump to admit that the effort to strong-arm Europe into giving up Greenland was a stupid idea.

 

That’s not to say that it wasn’t obviously stupid at the time. It was. But until this year, its consequences were merely theoretical.

 

Today, however, reporting indicates that Trump’s attempt to muscle America’s allies into submission engendered enough hard feelings in Europe that it became politically impossible for those democracies to justify an operation aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

 

When it came to Greenland, Trump embraced a might-makes-right philosophy untempered by shared liberal principles or universalist values. In the process, he attacked our allies’ national prestige and challenged their leaders to defend their nations’ honor against a bully.

 

Nations are composed only of people, after all. And people are motivated by many things, including intangible elements of statecraft like dignity, respect, and core moral principles.

 

By treating that fact of life with contempt, Trump deprived himself of easy access to the combined might of America’s alliance structure. You’d think he would regret that. Apparently, he does not.

 

It is entirely unclear why Donald Trump decided to announce the restoration of the blockade targeting Iranian ports, coinciding with the resumption of large-scale air strikes on Iranian targets, while at the same time stressing that the United States planned to substitute Iran’s extortion racket with its own.

 

In an appearance on Fox & Friends on Monday, Trump announced that the U.S. would henceforth “become guardians of the strait.” But we will expect to be compensated for the effort “at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped.”

 

So, the United States is going to war not to prevent Iran from altering the geostrategic status quo by imposing a toll on what was once a free and open international waterway. Rather, America is going to war to replace Iran’s assault on the global order with a shakedown of its own.

 

That’s not how this is going to work, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained at the end of last month. International maritime law is what it is, he told a reporter. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway,” Trump’s chief diplomat observed. “I think all the countries in this region would agree with us.”

 

Rubio is right about that. The Gulf states and Europe are already nervous enough about the resumption of hostilities between the United States and Iran. Their apprehension might be eased if they understood that the U.S. was acting in defense of universal principles from which they benefit, like the preservation of free maritime navigation rights through international commercial shipping lanes. Why would America’s allies support Washington’s objectives in the Strait of Hormuz if they are being told that they are expected to eagerly trade one illegitimate extortion racket for another?

 

Perhaps Trump thinks abstract principles like freedom of the seas are for suckers. Or maybe this is just another version of his “take the oil” refrain, in which he posits that U.S. military action overseas isn’t worth it unless America expropriates something from the enemy and its population. That might explain Trump’s threats, but it certainly doesn’t excuse them.

 

One of the president’s goals in this conflict should be to deepen the Islamic Republic’s international isolation. Even Tehran’s friends in the authoritarian world have expressed unease over Iran’s attempt to extort shipping interests off its coasts indefinitely. Iran’s unilateral alteration of the established order on the high seas could help the president convince a reluctant world that he was right all along – that Iran is a revisionist power that cannot be talked out of its violent ambitions. It must be confronted.

 

Instead, the president has decided that it’s better for the United States to present itself not a champion for the status quo ante from which all benefited but as just another threat to it.