Reporter: “what about the Strait of Hormuz, who is going to be in control of that?”
Trump: “uhhh, be jointly controlled …”
Reporter: “by who?” Trump: “maybe me … me and the Ayatollah”
In his latest comments to the press, President Trump reiterates the US and Iran had preliminary talks over the past few days, had very good discussions with Iran, and that’s why energy strikes were postponed temporarily. He described that this time, Iran means business, they want to settle, and Trump stresses “we will get it done I hope.” Meanwhile speculation and theories of secretive backchannel dealing abound.
Parliament speaker: “Iranian people demand complete & remorseful punishment of the aggressors.”
“Violation of international law.”
“Dangerous escalation.”
“Deep concern.”
“Call for restraint.”
One could set a stopwatch to it.
This ritual has become a defining feature of modern geopolitics. International law appears not when militias are armed, not when rockets are fired, not when terrorist proxies expand across borders — but precisely when someone tries to stop them. The target of this sudden legal panic was the regime governing the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state whose regional strategy has long revolved around funding proxy groups and projecting power through militant networks.
Yet the debate quickly shifted away from those realities and toward something far more urgent: Whether Israel and the United States had filled out the correct legal paperwork before acting. It is a curious inversion. The regimes least constrained by international law invoke it most loudly, while the countries that actually take the law seriously are the ones most frequently accused of violating it.
And so the question lingers.
If international law only appears the moment someone stops the arsonist, what exactly is it protecting?
Polling throughout the nearly three-week U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran has consistently shown near-unanimous backing for President Donald Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury among the MAGA base and overwhelming support among Republicans, while a new Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday finds that a majority of likely voters overall say the operation has been succeeding.
Make Hormuz golden again
