United States President Donald Trump has said and done countless stupid things in public. Few, however, match the spectacular idiocy of ordering the US Navy to "block" the Strait of Hormuz in order to "open" it. That's where he has elevated his verbal diarrhoea into state policy.

The Islamabad talks between Washington and Tehran collapsed after more than 21 hours because the United States arrived not with a realistic diplomatic framework but with a victor's shopping list.

Washington wanted Iran to end all uranium enrichment, dismantle its major enrichment facilities, surrender highly enriched uranium, stop backing allied militias, and fully open Hormuz without tolls. Iran rejected the terms, and that should surprise nobody.

Also Read: A ceasefire built for headlines, not peace

Even in distress, no State would sign away sovereignty because an American vice president smirked at a camera after an all-night session in Pakistan.

What followed was worse. Trump announced a naval blockade effective April 13, with the US forces to interdict shipping tied to Iranian ports while claiming to preserve navigation to non-Iranian destinations. The blockade was formally framed as a means of pressuring Tehran to reopen the strait. Read that again.

Washington would deploy military force to choke maritime access in the name of maritime access! Only a President as incurably intoxicated by his own noise could imagine this as a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent doctrine.

Also Read: Paying the price for looking away during crisis

Iran's response was predictably menacing. The Revolutionary Guards warned that military vessels approaching the strait would be treated as a ceasefire breach and threatened a "deadly vortex" for any enemy that made the wrong move. The International........

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