The acronym surfaced during the tariff wars last year. According to the pundits who should know better Trump Always Chickens Out. This was their assessment of Trump threatening to impose harsh tariffs and then relenting when bilateral trade policies are worked out. PDJT got scores of nations to agree to a tariff regimen that would probably have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
In the lead-up to the war with Iran, the same acronym was trotted out in reference to what might happen over there. PDJT kept saying that Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Their enrichment facility that was buried under a mountain was literally buried by massive ordinance dropped by B-2 bombers last year. The IRGC did not take the hint and have since been trying to recover the enriched uranium as many satellite images show. Why?
When protesters were being killed in Tehran early in the year, President Trump threatened strikes, telling Fox News he had “put Iran on notice.” Trump said he had been informed the killing had stopped and that executions of arrested protesters would not take place, citing “very important sources on the other side.”
The usual cynics cried that this was another example of TACO. These people claimed Trump had threatened force against adversaries 22 times but followed through on only two occasions. Democratic Minority leader Chuck Schumer attacked Trump from the right on Iran, suggesting that Trump is not being tough enough and is letting a “terrorist” government “get away with everything.”
Hmm. I wonder what the former Ayatollah thinks about that now? Oh, that’s right. He is somewhere out of this world getting his just desserts which, if there is any justice in the universe, is not 72 virgins. Khamenei had spent millions of dollars building an underground bunker, which he did not use on the morning of the strike. Sources indicate that Khamenei believed no one had the guts to strike him.
If this is an example of TACO, I would hate to see PDJT being belligerent. Did the TACO narrative, amplified by media and political critics, function as operational cover? Was Iran’s leadership lulled into a false sense of security because they, like Trump’s domestic critics, believed he would not follow through? Were the media and PDJT’s political opponents pawns in this operation? More than 50 of Iran’s top political leadership were killed in the first 50 seconds of the war.
The decapitation strategy continued during the early stages of the war with the elimination of the Supreme National Security Council headquarters as well as the wiping out of most of the Assembly of Experts.
As the week progressed, Iran’s air defense systems were systematically destroyed as well as many of their mobile launch facilities. Iran’s ability to project power has been severely curtailed.
Over the weekend coalition forces mostly destroyed the Tondgouyan Oil Refinery (located south of Tehran) and multiple storage depots. Towers of incandescent flame turned night into day. “The attacks,” the Times noted, “appeared to be the first targeting of energy infrastructure since the joint U.S.-Israeli air war on Iran began last weekend.”
Jeff Childers notes:
For decades, there’s been a tacit understanding among all major players in the Middle East —including the US and Israel— that oil infrastructure is off-limits in military conflicts. Not because anyone signed a treaty, but because everyone understood that hitting oil facilities was mutually assured economic destruction. Oil prices spike, stock markets plunge, and the attacking country gets blamed for wrecking the economy.
When Israel struck Iran in October 2024, for example, the Biden administration explicitly pressured Netanyahu to leave nuclear sites and oil facilities alone. Israel assured Biden they’d only hit military targets. The mullahs watched that, and got exactly the confirmation they wanted— even when Israel was retaliating for a direct Iranian missile attack, Washington drew a red line around the oil. The gentleman’s agreement held.
By striking the Tondgouyan refinery, Trump just shattered that implicit agreement, and it’s now lying on the desert sand in shards. The markets are not taking it well.
Let’s understand what really has taken place here. What is the Tondgouyan refinery and storage depot? The New York Times unhelpfully referred to it only as a “domestic facility” and part of Iran’s “energy infrastructure,” Tondgouyan was the IRGC’s key military fuel depot and ammunition dump.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, (IRGC), is more than just a conventional military force. It is both a shadow government and economic powerhouse that operates more or less independently of the civilian leadership. Last week, Fortune reported, “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard controls a sprawling business empire that dominates the economy”— more than half of Iran’s GDP.
A third of all Iran’s oil revenues are allotted to the IRGC. The IRGC ships some 85,000 barrels a day to Syria and the rest to China. Tondgouyan is not part of this process. Hitting Tondgouyan impairs the IRGC’s ability to keep its trucks and war machinery running, and undermines the regime’s social compact— selling fuel to its own population. It did not degrade Iran’s oil export capability, even though that’s what the useless NYTimes hopes to trick everyone into believing.
Think Venezuela here. The export facilities (Kharg Island) have not been damaged. Coalition forces are leaving it alone. Will the IRGC kamikaze the place if they see themselves going down? If they do, they will kill Iran’s economy. Will that kill the world’s economy?
Childers:
There is another vast, untapped global reservoir of available cheap oil. That reservoir is called Russia.
While all eyes linger on the smoke and flames in the Persian Gulf, the world’s largest available reservoir of cheap crude is sitting right there, frozen in place not by geology but by policy. Russia produces around ten million barrels a day —making it the world’s third-largest oil producer— but Western sanctions have kept much of that bottled up, stranded on tankers with nowhere to go, or diverted through sketchy shadow fleets at steep discounts.
On Friday —the day before the strike on Tondgouyan— Reuters reported, “US could lift sanctions on more Russian oil, says Bessent.”
Bessent said the US is considering lifting sanctions on Russian oil to “bring relief to the market.” In other words, the administration already had a replacement lined up for every barrel of Iranian crude taken offline by the war. “And we are looking at that,” he added.
In fact, he’s not just looking. He’s already doing it.
Secretary Bessent granted India a 30-day waiver of sanctions on Russian oil. Now it can buy cheap oil from Moscow’s fleet, millions of gallons of which just happen to be bobbing around the oceans, ready for delivery.
In one stroke of a Treasury pen, Russia gets its revenue back, global prices stabilize, and Iran’s leverage —“you can’t touch our oil without wrecking the world economy”— evaporates.
Hmm. Doesn’t sound like TACO to me. And how does this affect China?
More on that tomorrow.