For the better part of a decade, Donald Trump has been an avid, if irascible, reader of the Wall Street Journal – particularly the columns overseen by its long-time editor Paul Gigot.

Because the Journal is among the few American conservative outlets willing to criticize Trump – on everything from tariffs to temperament – he has developed a habit of denouncing it in public while devouring it in private.

The Journal, Trump recently declared on Truth Social, is “one of the worst and most inaccurate editorial boards in the world.” The ritual extends to annotated hard copies – margins filled with indignant scrawl – before the offending pages are FedExed back to News Corp headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.

Which makes what happened last weekend all the more curious. On April 10, the Journal – a reliable standard-bearer of neoconservative foreign-policy thinking – urged Washington to quarantine vessels carrying Iranian oil. Within two days, Trump had done precisely that, announcing a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz targeting ships trading through Iranian ports. The paper, in turn, was quick to approve.

The move marks a sharp escalation. Until now, Tehran had been selectively restricting passage through Hormuz – impeding much of the world’s tanker traffic and nudging energy prices higher – while continuing to export oil, particularly to China. The new American policy seeks to end that asymmetry by imposing direct costs on Iran’s own energy trade.

The Journal’s case is clear enough. A tougher line, it argues, is justified so long as Washington is willing to stomach the resulting disruption to global energy........

© The Spectator