Trump may be about to sign the worst self-inflicted strategic defeat of his presidency. Geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert believes the emerging Strait of Hormuz arrangement will essentially be a formal acknowledgment that the U.S. lost the war. Reports describe a jointly-run shipping corridor through the Strait, but Iran retains override authority over vessels and a cut of the fees (the exact outcome Trump spent weeks insisting wouldn't happen). Weichert's read: this is just the paperwork on a war that was already lost. U.S. interceptor and Tomahawk stockpiles were left almost fully depleted, and by his account, replenishing them isn't a matter of months; it's years, maybe longer, because of supply-chain bottlenecks no amount of Pentagon funding can fix quickly. The pitch coming out of Washington is simple: sign it, calm the markets, call it a win. But Weichert warns the second-order effects go far beyond the Gulf. If Riyadh's private threat to start dumping U.S. treasuries the moment Aramco gets hit is real, that's new pressure on a fragile petrodollar system. Layer on a fracturing regional order, Syrian forces mobilizing on the Iraqi border over Kurdish integration, Saudi Arabia quietly negotiating with the Houthis instead of fighting them, and Weichert doesn't see this settling into stability. He sees a multipolar Middle East emerging as U.S. hegemony recedes: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel jostling for position with no American referee left in the room. What began as an attempt to exit a costly war on the best terms available could end with the very system (dollar primacy, uncontested U.S. naval reach) that made American power in the Gulf possible in the first place. - @MarioNawfal