Politics

From Wall Street to the White House, the dish everyone’s talking about this week is the Persian Taco. It’s what’s served when Trump chickens out in Iran.

In the early hours of Monday morning, witnessing oil prices surge, stock futures plummet and bond yields climb due to his threat to pummel Iran’s civilian power infrastructure, the president hurriedly walked it back, announcing he would put off the bombing because talks with Iran were actually going great. After the bombast and bloodshed, it was time for Taco (Trump Always Chickens Out), a move he first put on display during the tariffs crisis last year.

Bonds snapped back in instants and the price of Brent crude recoiled to below $100 a barrel from more than $112 seconds earlier. By 9.30am in New York, the S&P 500 stock index had jumped 1.5%, defying futures contracts that had earlier signalled a 1% daily decline.

Maybe we should thank Trump for stopping American forces before they committed a war crime, setting off an inevitable tit-for-tat with Iran to blow up civilian infrastructure around the Gulf; delivering a gut punch to the global economy that would send financial markets into a tailspin.

Or we could say this whole excursion was a fucking farce to distract from Epstein.