How will Trump respond?

Iran is being blamed by the U.S. for damaging two oil tankers today. Here is Secretary of State Pompeo.


Here is a video of one of the tankers.


Ace of Spades comments:

This is going to be an interesting call from Trump. On one hand, he talks up a ferocious game of obliterating enemies in war.

On the other hand, he seems to actually be mostly a dove. He does not want to get into foreign wars and he doesn't want to upset the beautiful, terrific economic conditions we have going on here.

But he now has to pick one of these impulses or the other.

I suppose he could chart some middle path of tactical strikes against a few key Iranian military installations -- but Iran doesn't have to play the moderate course back. Iran could escalate this into full war.

So I don't know if there really is any "middle path" here; the middle path will likely lead to the war path.

So what is Trump? Is he the dove or the hawk? People say he's a Jacksonian, and avoids war until it cannot be avoided, then he seeks to inflict crushing damage.

But is he? Or is he more of a Clintonian "proportional response" type? Or even an Obama "red line" type?

We don't really know yet.

Iran seems to be guessing he's an Obama-like "red line" type -- all bark, no bite.

But I guess we'll see.