FYI - How to Think About Trump’s War With Iran
Frank S T Hsiao
Hi, here is an interesting and thought-provoking NYT column by Friedman.
Frank-CO
Thomas L. Friedman
How to Think About Trump’s War With Iran
March 2, 2026
New York Time
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As this column has noted before, in the Middle East the opposite of autocracy is not necessarily democracy. Often it is disorder. Because when Middle East dictatorships are decapitated, one of two things happens. They either implode, like Libya did, or they explode, like Syria did.
Persians are only around 60 percent of Iran’s population. The other 40 percent is a mosaic of minorities, mainly Azeris, Kurds, Lurs, Arabs and Baloch. Each has links with lands outside of Iran, especially Azeris with Azerbaijan and Kurds with Kurdistan. Prolonged chaos in Tehran could lead any of them to split off and for Iran to, in effect, explode.
Iran has witnessed the collapse of governments or the fall of rulers throughout its history. Every time, “Iran stayed intact,” said Koteich. “For the first time I am not sure it will stay intact.”
If you want to see $150-a-barrel oil, that kind of Iranian disintegration would take you there. Iran’s oil exports of 1.6 million barrels a day, which go mostly to China, would be taken completely off the global oil market. Some 20 percent of all global oil trade moves through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran can shut down. Insurance rates for oil shippers are already skyrocketing, and some 150 tankers in the Gulf are reportedly frozen in place.
Meanwhile, over in Beijing, President Xi Jinping has to be wondering how his weapons systems would stack up against the U.S.-supplied ones to Taiwan, having seen U.S.-made fighter planes and smart missiles easily evade or destroy Iran’s Russian-supplied antiaircraft systems and assassinate much of Iran’s national security elite in their homes and offices. Maybe this is not the week to invade Taiwan — or even next week.
It might be a good week, though, for Beijing to look at all the Iranian people spontaneously dancing in the streets to celebrate the death of Khamenei and ask itself if the People’s Republic of China should have been propping up his regime with oil purchases all these years. Maybe it should have been on the side of the Iranian people.
It is way too early to predict how this war will affect two critical 2026 elections — one in Israel and one in the United States.
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