United States President Donald Trump has said and done countless stupid things in public. Few, however, match the spectacular idiocy of ordering the US Navy to "block" the Strait of Hormuz in order to "open" it. That's where he has elevated his verbal diarrhoea into state policy.

The Islamabad talks between Washington and Tehran collapsed after more than 21 hours because the United States arrived not with a realistic diplomatic framework but with a victor's shopping list.

Washington wanted Iran to end all uranium enrichment, dismantle its major enrichment facilities, surrender highly enriched uranium, stop backing allied militias, and fully open Hormuz without tolls. Iran rejected the terms, and that should surprise nobody.

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Even in distress, no State would sign away sovereignty because an American vice president smirked at a camera after an all-night session in Pakistan.

What followed was worse. Trump announced a naval blockade effective April 13, with the US forces to interdict shipping tied to Iranian ports while claiming to preserve navigation to non-Iranian destinations. The blockade was formally framed as a means of pressuring Tehran to reopen the strait. Read that again.

Washington would deploy military force to choke maritime access in the name of maritime access! Only a President as incurably intoxicated by his own noise could imagine this as a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent doctrine.

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Iran's response was predictably menacing. The Revolutionary Guards warned that military vessels approaching the strait would be treated as a ceasefire breach and threatened a "deadly vortex" for any enemy that made the wrong move. The International Maritime Organisation pushed back, stressing that no country has the right to prohibit innocent passage through international straits.

In plain language, the waterway is now trapped between two armed absurdities, each claiming to defend navigation while making navigation more dangerous. This is what happens when a war launched in arrogance begins to outrun its own propaganda.

The conflict began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, and even the ceasefire that followed more than a month later was less a settlement than an exhausted pause. The Islamabad contacts were the first high-level in-person negotiations between the US and Iran since 1979; yet, Trump himself undercut them by boasting that America had already won and that sweeping the Strait mattered more than any deal.

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He claimed, again with no clear proof, that Iran "wants to make a deal". This reveals the man's pathology far more than any shred of statesmanship. He cannot negotiate because he cannot stop performing. Every microphone becomes a slot machine into which he stuffs another lie, another threat, and another grotesque improvisation.

And then, because vulgarity alone no longer satisfies him, Trump dragged the Pope into this filth. After Pope Leo condemned the war and kept speaking for peace, Trump lashed out at him as "weak on crime" and terrible on foreign policy and then doubled down instead of apologising.

It takes a special kind of moral sewage for a President who helped set West Asia alight to sneer at a global figure still speaking a recognisable language of restraint. But Trump is a man who mistakes indecency for strength and noise for command. Even now, after helping to manufacture this disaster, he cannot stop fouling the air.

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Yet, Trump is not the only saboteur here. His servility toward Israel, and toward Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, hangs over every failed attempt at de-escalation. While the Islamabad talks were underway, Netanyahu was publicly insisting the battle was not over. Israel has continued prosecuting the Lebanon front even as broader truce efforts stagger along, with Macron earlier urging that any ceasefire must cover Lebanon as well.

A Reuters poll also found that a large majority of Israelis opposed extending the truce to the Lebanon front. Netanyahu's political incentives are naked. Peace is dangerous for him. A durable US-Iran accommodation would reduce his leverage, shrink his war narrative, and deny him the permanent emergency on which he has so long fed.

So, Trump does what he always does when confronted with a stronger partner in manipulation. He submits. He blusters for domestic consumption, but structurally, he remains bent around Israeli escalation. He postures as the master of the deal while behaving like a subcontractor for a regional agenda that has no interest in a deal at all.

Netanyahu wants Iran weakened, contained, humiliated, and kept under siege. The last thing he appears to want is a stable arrangement between Washington and Tehran that lowers the temperature and rearranges regional power with America, rather than Israel, at the diplomatic centre.

That is why Trump's own fantasy now takes such deranged forms. Now he is claiming that Iran wants an agreement even as Washington has escalated to a blockade. Others have reported his airy talk about turning Hormuz into some jointly supervised arrangement that could somehow produce order, leverage and money all at once.

This is the real Trump doctrine stripped bare. Not peace, not law, not security. A racket, a shakedown wearing the suit of grand strategy. In his head, even one of the world's most dangerous chokepoints can be turned into a toll booth with flags on it and cameras nearby. The man does not understand history, theology, diplomacy, or war. And he does not seem to understand even the grammar of extortion.

Meanwhile, the real world keeps sending its bill. There is sharply reduced traffic through Hormuz compared with pre-war levels, with markets already reacting to the blockade and WTI crude back above $100 a barrel. There is evident allied unease, with Britain and France refusing to join Washington's blockade and instead discussing a future, peaceful, multinational mission after hostilities end. That alone tells you how reckless this American move is.

Even governments that share Washington's alarm over Iran are unwilling to sanctify Trump's improvisations. They understand what the White House does not or pretends not to. Once great powers start playing chicken in a narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of globally traded oil passes, the line between coercion and catastrophe becomes dangerously thin.

Trump will keep talking, of course. He will keep claiming victory, inventing leverage, insulting priests, flattering war criminals, threatening navies, and calling chaos control. But the Strait of Hormuz is not Truth Social, and West Asia is not one of his rallies. History is often cruellest to men who confuse theatrical dominance with actual power. He has already helped set the region on fire.

Now, in a feat of almost comic depravity, he wants credit for standing in front of the blaze and claiming he alone can manage the smoke!

The author is a National Award winner for Best Narration and an independent political analyst. Views expressed are personal.