Almost incredibly, US president Donald Trump has asked China, the UK, France and other countries to deploy warships to the Persian gulf to ensure that international shipping – especially oil tankers – have safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the face of Iranian threats to blockade and mine such traffic.

I say “almost”, because nothing is truly incredible about Trump and his fawning appointees. Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth are astonishingly illiterate as strategists, tacticians, historians and politicians.

The roles played in his clown-show regime by his spouse, Melania, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have at least one point of logic: a desire by the family to loot the massive frothy funds made available to them by America’s billionaire plutocrats in search of further enrichment, and by Arabian despots as a crude form of protection racket.

An Iranian navy vessel was torpedoed off the coast of Sri Lanka where it had been participating in joint naval exercises with Trump’s navy and those of other regional powers. Trump excused the disgusting, treacherous murder of many of its crew by saying he was told by a general that sinking the ship with a torpedo was “more fun” than letting them survive.

An Irishwoman in New York: ‘You can be who you want here if you learn to climb the ladder’

Martin was left with two choices as Trump recited an increasingly cranky litany........

© The Irish Times