How to Win the Iran War AND Make Greta Thunberg Weep in One Easy Step

Here’s a PR question for the peanut gallery: If your client is entering a high-stakes, high-profile, highly contentious court case, what’s your most important PR objective?

The correct answer is D: Your #1 PR objective is making damn sure you don’t screw over your client’s legal team, because winning the court case is the best PR of all.

Johnny Depp didn’t win his PR war with Amber Heard because his PR team masterfully manipulated public opinion. He won because he beat her in court.

Victory is the ultimate positive PR. Nothing else comes close.

Same applies to Sean “Puffy” Combs’ legal woes. What his PR team said before and/or during his trial is now 100% irrelevant, because his guilty verdict is all we remember. (Well, that and baby oil.)

There’s simply no substitute for real, actual victory.

Herm Edwards was a mediocre football head coach (lifetime record in the NFL and college: 72-94), but an All-Pro at colorful quotes. Among his best: “You play to win the game. Hello?! You play to win the game!”

Be like Herm Edwards: Play to win the game.

Because it doesn’t matter if you “win” the news cycle before or during high-stakes litigation. Hey, it’s nice to win, but if you lose the court case, nobody will care: The media coverage of your defeat will dominate future headlines — and your earlier PR campaign will be forgotten.

Always keep the main thing… the main thing. Don’t sacrifice tomorrow at the altar of today.

It’s true in high-profile litigation, but it’s even truer in war. There’s no substitute for winning.

Which brings us to Iran, where Schrödinger’s Strait is still open and closed; the war unresolved; and the ceasefire on “massive life support.”

Meanwhile, the GOP is getting hammered in the polls: According to the New York Times/Siena, 64% of Americans — and 73% of independents — now believe the Iran War was the wrong decision. 

Left unaddressed, it’ll be a huge drag on the midterms.

And we can’t really blame voters for feeling this way: With the outcome still unresolved, we’re paying the price for the war via (much) higher gas prices — but we haven’t enjoyed the fruits of a defanged, nuclear-free Iran, or greater global stability. We need to get out of the “pain phase” and into the “reward phase” post-haste. 

This lingering, never-ending status quo is a political killer for Republicans.

Lately, President Donald Trump has been favoring economic pressure. “The [Iran] blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing,” he told Axios. “They are choking like a stuffed pig.”

Yes, Iran is ensnared in a crippling blockade — but it’s clearly not enough. At least, not yet: Leaked CIA reports say Iran can survive for three or four more months. Perhaps even longer.

But in another four months, it’ll be late September — with the 2026 midterms just a few weeks away. That’s not enough time for voters to feel the benefits of victory.

Donald Trump needs to speed up the timeline ASAP.

Part of our blockade strategy is to drown the mullahs in oil. Since Iran can’t export its oil, eventually it’ll run out of places to store it, which will pressure the mullahs to concede. 

As Scott Bessent wrote on X:

Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export terminal, is soon nearing storage capacity, which will force the regime to reduce oil production, resulting in an additional approximately $170 million per day in lost revenue, and causing permanent damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure. Treasury will continue to exert maximum pressure and any person, vessel, or entity facilitating illicit flows to Tehran risks exposure to U.S. sanctions. [emphasis added]

Causing permanent damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure is what the mullahs fear most, because Iran needs foreign help to access its oil. It can’t do it on its own. And because of the mechanics of oil pumping, once the oil is turned off, there’s no guarantee it’ll come back on.

But as long as Iran still has storage space for its oil, its wells will continue pumping.

Which is why Trump’s next step is clear: He should end the current ceasefire — but instead of targeting bridges and power plants, he should target Iran’s oil storage facilities.

It’s an idea that geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan recommended last week:

[Iran is] pulling tankers out of mothballs, parking them near Kharg Island, which is their primary export point in the northern extremes of the Persian Gulf, and loading them up to use as floating storage. They can do this until they run out of tankers.

[…]

So, what we’re seeing is the development of a tanker parking lot off the coast of Iranian parts in the Indian Ocean, which means there’s already about 20 there. We’ll probably have another ten there next week. And then that’ll be all of them.

Well, these are all Iranian government owned. These are all shadow tankers. And if something were to happen to them, then the Iranians — even if the sanctions were lessened — couldn’t export anything without using unsanctioned tankers.

So, if you’re looking for a way to force the Iranians to accept a deal that also closes down the shadow fleet, this is probably the way to go. And since these tankers are being held out in the Indian Ocean, well away from population centers in Iran, you also wouldn’t face the same degree of damage or threat from Iranian military capabilities if they were to all be seized and relocated.

It’s a simple strategy: If Trump’s objective is to force Iran to capitulate via economic pressure, we can either play the long game — and wait several more months — or we can expedite the timeline by destroying Iran’s storage capacity.

Both strategies lead to the same endpoint — but the latter gets us there a helluva lot faster!

I say we expedite the timeline by seizing Iran’s ships and blowing up its oil storage, because this never-ending, back-and-forth status quo is deeply damaging. The midterms are right around the corner; the sad political reality is, time isn’t on the president’s side.

Furthermore, with Zeihan’s strategy, one of two things will happen:

Either Iran caves and signs a peace deal on our terms, or its oil production will permanently go offline, thus depriving the mullahs of the financial resources necessary to fund global terrorism, purchase ballistic missiles, and develop nuclear technology.

Full disclosure: Targeting oil storage, boats, and facilities isn’t a risk-free endeavor. Via sabotage or combat, it’s foreseeable that some oil will leak into the water. Left-wing environmental activists, such as Greta Thunberg, will accuse America of “destroying” Mother Earth.

But I’d rather risk the environmental damage of an oil spill than the radioactive fallout of a nuclear bomb.

Those are our two options: We can either win the Iran War now — well before the midterms — and have the pleasure of watching Greta Thunberg cry. (Seems like win-win to me!)

Or we can wait several more months and wish for the best.

But wishing is a poor strategy. Like Herm Edwards used to say, “A goal without a plan is a wish.”

So instead of wishing, let’s play to win the game.

One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.

Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.

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