Excerpt:
"Yesterday's Global Daily by Ben Picton, 'The Wrath of Kharg', couldn't help but get me thinking about the infamous Kobayashi Maru scenario in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. For those unfamiliar, back when Star Trek was a popular franchise based on serious ideas, not an unpopular one based on frivolous ones, Starfleet Academy tested its budding starship captains by making them try to rescue the simulated crew of a disabled freighter stranded in dangerous territory. Abandoning them was a failure; yet every attempt to retrieve them would be met by an ever-increasing number of attackers. Crucially, this no-win scenario was a key test of officer candidates’ characters, not their tactics or strategy.

The question today is if President Trump is himself caught in a Kobayashi Maru scenario given:

If he retreats from Iran, it's a geopolitical defeat the equivalent of the 1956 Suez Crisis; and he may not even be able to retreat if Iran refuses to stop the war regionally.

If he continues to attack, energy markets will panic further. The Israeli press says the country is preparing to fight for another month vs Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, not the three weeks alluded to yesterday; and Iran is now targeting upstream oil and gas fields (such as Shah in the UAE), not just refineries and export terminals, threatening energy supply, not flow.
...
Treasury Secretary Bessent says the US is fine with some Iranian, Chinese, and Indian vessels having successfully made it through Hormuz. Why wouldn't they be? If Iran starts letting everyone but the US and Israel through --neither of whom use it-- then the blockade is effectively over. Yet that argues for Iran not to do so to any great extent."