Mike Adams critiques Donald Trump's paradoxical blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, arguing it contradicts demands for an open waterway and constitutes "world extortion" within Iran's territorial waters. He dismisses claims of strategic superiority, noting the U.S. cannot meet its 20 million daily barrel consumption without imports while facing existential threats to allies like Japan and South Korea from Iranian missiles. Ultimately, Adams predicts the blockade will fail or escalate into bombing campaigns, leading to economic collapse rather than securing energy dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump's Strait of Hormuz Blockade00:08:00
Well, after weeks of Trump demanding that the Strait of Hormuz be opened, and after claiming that the U.S. Navy would escort ships to reopen it, and after claiming that it must be open and Iran will have to be forced to open it, etc., on and on and on for weeks, Trump has now decided to announce the closing of the Strait of Hormuz with a U.S. naval blockade.
That's right, I filed this under the You Can't Make This Up category.
Trump is now blockading the existing Iranian blockade.
That only exists because Trump launched the war against Iran, after which Iran enacted its blockade that did not exist before the war.
So now Trump has added a U.S. naval blockade to the blockade that only exists because Trump launched the war against Iran in the first place.
So we were told all along the goal was to open the strait.
Now it appears the goal is to close the strait.
And of course, whoever is left, low IQ magatards that are still remaining, there's not very many of them, are cheering this.
Even though three weeks ago they were cheering the naval escort announcement, oh my God, the strait's going to be open, 5D chess.
And now when Trump announces that he's going to close the strait, those same people are like, it's going to be closed, 5D chess, man.
It's like Trump could announce anything and they would just call it 5D chess.
By the way, 5D chess is a term that means Trump screwed up again, made a huge mistake, and we're covering up for it by calling it genius.
It's not genius, it's just stupid.
So let's go through the stupidity of this latest announcement, which will have, of course, dire economic consequences for the United States and its allies.
So, this, of course, follows the attempted negotiations over the weekend in Islamabad, where, you know, JD Vance showed up and gave a list of ultimatum demands.
And then, when Iran didn't accept that entire list of demands, JD Vance holds a press conference and says, well, we tried, you know, we negotiated, and they didn't accept our demands, and so that's it.
Well, That's not negotiation, is it?
That's not diplomacy.
It's nothing like that.
It's just an ultimatum.
And of course, the ultimatum was basically a total surrender by Iran, which Iran will not agree to.
So that's the backdrop to this.
In response to that, then, Trump has announced this blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
But as you'll hear here, because I'm going to read Trump's tweet for you, it's more than a blockade of the Strait.
Apparently, the U.S. Navy is now going to hunt down any tanker that already passed through the Strait, you know, in the last, what, six weeks or so.
And the U.S. Navy is going to destroy all those tankers.
Or at least that's what's being implied.
Let me read it for you so you can see.
I mean, this is getting so insane.
Here's Trump's message So there you have it.
The meeting went well.
Most points were agreed to.
But the only point that really mattered, nuclear, was not.
Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.
At some point, we will reach an all being allowed to go in, all being allowed to go out basis, he says, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying there may be a mine out there somewhere that nobody knows about them.
This is world extortion, says Trump in all caps.
and leaders of countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.
Of course, he extorts the world and he deploys the U.S. Navy to seize oil tankers coming from Venezuela, for example, to steal their oil, to pirate ships that might have Russian oil, to invade Venezuela or other countries, to bomb other countries, to initiate an illegal war against Iran, among other things.
And then Trump has the gall to say that this is world extortion.
My goodness, if anybody's running an extortion racket against the world, it's the Trump administration.
Anyway, he continues.
I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran.
What?
So, again, the U.S. Navy is going to hunt down every oil tanker that paid a toll.
These oil tankers are going to places like Japan because Japan paid the toll.
The toll that Trump was actually bragging about just a few days ago, saying that Iran.
Would collect a toll and Iran would be wealthy, and this is our new peace deal.
I mean, that was just five days ago or something, or a week ago or less.
And now it's, you know, world extortion.
So now he's going to hunt down the oil tankers sailing to Japan, or the gas tankers sailing to Taiwan, or to China, or anywhere, and is going to what?
Destroy them?
Sink them?
I mean, who knows?
Anyway, he continues No one who pays an illegal toll.
We'll have safe passage on the high seas.
An illegal toll.
By the way, in case you didn't know, the Strait of Hormuz is well within the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman.
So, you may or may not know this, but territorial waters recognized by the US and pretty much all the other countries in the world extend 12 nautical miles off your coast.
So, for the first 12 nautical miles, which is like almost 14, you know, western miles, That's all your territory.
Well, the Strait of Hormuz is only, what, 21 miles at its most narrow point, which means that the northern part of the strait is clearly Iranian territorial waters.
And then the southern portion of the strait is Omani territorial waters.
So, these territorial waters actually overlap.
They meet, and there are no international waters whatsoever in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz.
So, in fact, you know, if the United States sat where Iran sits right now, the U.S. would claim that the entire Strait is their property and that they have the right to charge tolls and control it, whatever.
In fact, the U.S. claims similar rights for areas that are up to 200 nautical miles offshore of the United States, including control over energy.
and energy harvesting and offshore drilling, etc.
So for the U.S. to claim, oh, these are international waters, even the U.S. doesn't even recognize that in terms of its own coastal waterways.
By definition, the U.S. would say these are, in fact, territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
But anyway, Trump goes on.
He says, we will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits.
Any Iranian who fires at us or at peaceful vessels will be blown to hell, he says.
Anyway, he goes on.
He says, their Navy is gone.
Their Air Force is gone.
Their anti-aircraft and radar are useless.
This is the same Trump who, I mean, he said that a few days ago, and then a huge loss of United States military aircraft happened as part of that attempted mission to extract the enriched uranium.
The Oil Import Reality Check00:04:21
Remember that?
The largest loss of U.S. aircraft since Vietnam, the Vietnam War.
On any one day, let's be clear.
So Trump just constantly lying.
I mean, didn't he say four weeks ago that we'd already won?
That Iran was completely destroyed?
They just didn't know it yet?
Now here we are, almost a month later.
Trump continues to say they've been completely defeated, but yet the Strait is not open.
And somehow he thinks that our Navy is going to resolve the situation by double blockading the Strait of Hormuz.
Makes no sense, does it?
So, how is double blockading the Strait of Hormuz going to restore global energy shipments and oil and gas and sulfuric acid and helium and all these things?
It's not.
Now, of course, the word went out to all of the MAGA Tards to start claiming that this was 5D chess by Trump because they suddenly discovered maritime maps of tankers in the ocean.
And they started sharing photos of tankers in the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump calls the Gulf of America.
And so all these Trumpsters were all over social media posting an image of the tankers in the Gulf saying, oh, my God, Trump's a genius.
Now we're going to sell the oil to the world.
All the tankers are coming to America.
To load up on American oil.
We're replacing the Persian Gulf.
You know, we just took the whole market away from Iran and Saudi Arabia, etc.
So, the level of stupidity of that is so far off the charts, it's almost hard to explain.
But first of all, these people apparently never knew about tanker traffic in the Gulf of Mexico until just now.
Because they're astonished at a map showing tanker traffic, the same kind of tanker traffic that has been there.
For decades, right?
So, not really very much new there.
It's the same tanker traffic that's always been in and out of the Gulf because, yeah, we are exporting and we are importing oil.
And that's the second point the United States of America consumes more oil domestically than what it produces domestically.
We're about 7 million barrels per day short.
So a lot of those tankers coming to the Gulf of Mexico are actually bringing us oil.
They're unloading oil because the United States needs to import oil.
Now, does the U.S. also export oil?
Yes, it does at the same time.
Is the U.S. one of the largest producers of oil in the world?
Yes, it is.
However, there are different kinds of oil, different grades of oil.
The U.S. exports largely what it can't use, and it has to import other grades and other types of oil.
That are the right mix for the refineries that the U.S. has.
And without the imports, the U.S. couldn't meet its domestic demand.
So anybody saying that the U.S. is going to replace the Middle East now and just provide all the oil that the world needs, you know, is smoke and crack because there's about 20 million barrels per day that's missing because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. is 7 million barrels per day short, which means, of course, the U.S. can't export.
20 million barrels per day.
That's not possible.
In fact, the US itself is using about 20 million barrels per day or something very close to that.
So there's no excess oil in the United States.
And all the MAGATARDs seeing the map with the tankers, they are wildly misreading it.
They don't even know what they're looking at, they have no idea.
I mean, I saw some people's maps that also included cruise ships and, you know, entertainment vessels and things like that.
And they go, oh my God, look at all the oil tankers.
Those aren't even oil tankers, you moron.
But whatever, you know, none of this makes any sense.
And it's just low IQ people that are supporting this.
So the bottom line is this is going to hurt the world tremendously.
Why Allies Can't Endure This00:08:16
Now, the MAGA supporters think it's going to somehow hurt China more than it hurts everybody else, but that's not true.
And here's why.
First of all, China has a massive supply of oil reserves.
It's between one and two billion barrels of oil, I believe.
Now, it's not going to last forever.
It might not even last a year, but it's quite, I mean, it's a large supply.
Secondly, China's power grid doesn't run on oil and natural gas, hardly any.
It runs on coal, hydropower, wind, and solar.
That's right.
China actually is one of the world's leaders in renewable energy sources, and plus they have a lot of coal-fired power plants.
So, you know, they don't get coal out of the Middle East, and they don't get wind and hydro out of the Middle East.
So China can continue to power its grid quite successfully.
Plus, where it needs oil, which includes things like, you know, polymers or feedstocks for polymers, polyethylene, a lot of industrial chemicals that China does need, it can also source those from other places, and plus it can get oil and gas from Russia, which is, you know, a neighbor, an ally of China.
China also has good relationships with Brazil.
And it can even get oil from Canada, among other places.
It can get energy from Australia.
So China has plenty of supply options, whereas U.S. ally countries like Taiwan and South Korea and Japan, they have very few options.
They're screwed, basically.
The longer this goes on, the more painful it's going to get in places like Taiwan and South Korea.
China doesn't like the strait being closed, but it's not an existential threat to China.
It is an existential threat to Taiwan.
And South Korea, and eventually to Japan's financial solvency, which is already on the brink of destruction anyway.
And there are many other countries that are impacted as well.
So, if Trump is playing this game of chicken, sort of global economic chicken, to see how long Iran can last with no traffic through the strait, I think Trump is going to be sorely disappointed because Iran can outlast the U.S. and its allies.
There's no comparison.
After all, Iran has already survived 47 years under economic sanctions, many of which have been quite severe.
And Iran has also survived after this massive bombing campaign by the U.S. Air Force and cruise missiles from the Navy, etc.
And it's still there.
Iran knows how to suffer.
They know how to suffer and survive.
The U.S. doesn't.
U.S. allies are not capable of enduring that.
In fact, right now in Taiwan, the head of the KMT party, the Guo Min Tang, as it's called, just met with China's President Xi and had a really great conversation essentially about reunification with China.
Or maybe I shouldn't use the term reunification, but unification.
It looks like Taiwan is increasingly realizing that the U.S. can't protect it and can't provide the energy that Taiwan needs.
And really being an ally of the United States is useless at this point.
Just ask Qatar, right?
Or ask Bahrain, ask Kuwait, you know?
It's useless.
And so it looks like Taiwan is going to be talking with China about unifying with the mainland and then having energy and having defense and keeping Taiwan alive under the umbrella of Chinese protection, not the United States.
So that's just one of the consequences of where this is going.
And speaking of China, if Trump keeps his promise here and has the U.S. Navy hunt down oil tankers that are headed to China, is Trump really going to start World War III with China by sinking Chinese tankers?
And if that's what he promises to do, then wouldn't China begin, let's say, escorting its own tankers with its own ships?
Wouldn't China take other actions to stop the United States from.
You know, these very dangerous escalations, for example, halting all rare earth exports to the United States or sinking U.S. aircraft carriers or something, you know, which China could do in 20 or 30 minutes, could sink them all.
And what about Russia's submarines?
And, you know, it brings up the question, too how is the U.S. Navy going to enact a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz when the U.S. Navy can't even get close to the Strait?
You know, I mean, Yeah, over the weekend there were two U.S. destroyers, allegedly.
It was probably just spoofed identity broadcasts.
But allegedly, two U.S. destroyers began to approach the Strait.
And then Iran warned them that they would be attacked if they didn't turn around.
So they turned around and they got out of there.
And then, of course, that was celebrated as a great victory by Trump cards, Trump cultists, who said, See, we sailed through the Strait.
No, you didn't.
You got caught and you got warned and you backed off.
So, how is the U.S. Navy going to blockade this strait?
Because if any naval vessel gets within, I don't know, pick a distance, 500 kilometers of the shoreline of Iran, it's going to get hit with drones and missiles.
It's going to get hit.
So, I mean, gosh, the USS Abraham Lincoln already found that out the hard way.
And so did the Gerald R. Ford also.
Got its back end blown up.
And no, it wasn't a laundry room fire.
That was just the cover story.
So, how are you going to enforce the blockade if you can't even get your ships in there?
So, the bottom line here is that it's U.S. allies that are going to be screaming for an end to this.
Things are going to get far worse.
And it's actually, you know, Trump's going to be under tremendous pressure to back off on the blockade, a blockade that the U.S. Navy will not be able to enforce.
So, My prediction is that the blockade doesn't last very long, at least the US blockade doesn't.
And it'll be another taco, maybe Taco Tuesday again.
We had Taco Tuesday last week.
Seems like a weekly event, you know.
It's always Taco Tuesday.
So Trump's going to taco down very soon here and chicken out.
And he'll say, well, we're going to stop the blockade.
If they don't stop their blockade, then we're going to bomb them again.
You know, he's going to return to bombing.
And then saying, you have to open the strait.
Yeah, but you closed it.
Well, but we closed it because they closed it.
So you want to close.
No, we want to open.
Well, then you're going to have to eventually meet Iran's demands, which are quite reasonable, actually.
In fact, ultimately, the only way that Trump gets through this is if he eventually surrenders to Iran's demands, which so far he seems mentally incapable of doing because Trump is a narcissist, he's an egomaniac, he's demented, he's got low IQ, etc.
Clearly, I mean, he used to be more sharp, but not anymore.
And He's just going to, I guess, take the whole world economy off the cliff into the abyss to avoid having to admit that he lost.
That's what it seems like.
So, you know, Trump scores another loss for humanity and for the reputation of the United States of America.
Sourcing Vitamins Amidst Nuclear Fear00:03:40
So that's where all this is going.
Stay tuned.
I've got some other reports, I've got some other interviews, I've got a lot available for you this week.
You can follow my videos at brightvideos.com.
You can follow my social media posts at brightion.social, where my username is HealthRanger, or until I get banned, I'm on X. HealthRanger is my name there.
And you can also read my articles and see my very popular infographics at naturalnews.com.
I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for listening.
Take care.
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