{"id":65855,"date":"2026-04-13T21:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/65855\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T21:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:50:20","slug":"the-peace-president-gets-belligerent-with-iran-and-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/65855\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Peace President\u201d Gets Belligerent with Iran and the Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

That night, Trump was back online, this time launching a tirade<\/a> against the first American Pope, Leo XIV. Earlier in the week, the President had claimed that God supports the U.S. and Israel in their war against Iran. At a prayer vigil at St.\u00a0Peter\u2019s Basilica on Saturday, the Pope warned<\/a> about the \u201cdelusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.\u201d He did not mention Trump by name, but it wasn\u2019t hard to infer. \u201cEnough of the idolatry of self and money!\u201d Leo said. \u201cEnough of the display of power! Enough of war!\u201d Among those in attendance<\/a> at the service was the Archbishop of Tehran.<\/p>\n

En route back to Washington from Florida, Trump issued a blistering attack on the Pontiff on Truth Social. Leo was \u201cterrible\u201d on foreign policy for not supporting the U.S. military operation in Venezuela, in January, or the war in Iran, he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I\u2019m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do.\u201d Leo was only elected to the papacy, Trump charged, because the Church thought that an American would know how to deal with Trump. \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t in the White House, Leo wouldn\u2019t be in the Vatican,\u201d he said. The Pope should \u201cget his act together\u201d and \u201cstop catering to the Radical Left,\u201d the post went on. \u201cIt\u2019s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it\u2019s hurting the Catholic Church!\u201d Later, Trump posted an A.I. image of what appeared to be himself as Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Leo, who was starting a four-nation tour of Africa, said that he had no fear of the Trump Administration. When pressed by reporters on his plane about Trump\u2019s remarks on Truth Social, he replied<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s ironic\u2014the name of the site itself. Say no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the shaky ceasefire enters its second week, the U.S. blockade, now under way, changes the dynamics in the Persian Gulf. Since the war began, Iran has choked off most maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, letting only some \u201cfriendly\u201d ships pass through. Now the U.S. will block all ships bound for or coming from Iran or its coastal areas.<\/p>\n

The strategic calculus, for both countries, is about holding out longer than the other. \u201cThe United States and Iran are drifting into a familiar and dangerous pattern: a war of attrition where each side believes it can impose more pain than it can absorb,\u201d Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of Iran analysis in Israeli military intelligence who is now at the Institute for National Security Studies, warned<\/a> on Monday. \u201cThis is a recipe not for resolution, but for escalation.\u201d He also wrote, \u201cClosing the Strait of Hormuz will not force Iran into submission, at least not from Tehran\u2019s perspective. What did not work after five weeks of sustained aerial pressure is unlikely to succeed through maritime pressure alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The markets agreed. On Monday, the price of oil quickly surged above a hundred dollars a barrel. In the U.S., the cost of gas had already topped four dollars a gallon. That, along with continued volatility in the stock market, has led many Republicans to fear consequences in the midterm elections in November. An English-language post<\/a> on X, which purports to be from Ghalibaf, responded to Trump\u2019s blockade announcement with a quip, \u201cEnjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called \u2018blockade\u2019, Soon you\u2019ll be nostalgic for $4\u2013$5 gas.\u201d Ghalibaf is emerging as the most powerful politician in Iran after the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei\u2014and the reported injuries to his son Mojtaba, the new Supreme Leader\u2014in U.S. and Israeli air strikes on the first day of the war.<\/p>\n

Iran, whose infrastructure has been hard hit by more than thirteen thousand U.S. air strikes and more than ten thousand Israeli strikes, may suffer huge financial losses, too. A blockade could cost<\/a> the nation more than four hundred million dollars a day in lost trade, or some thirteen billion dollars a month, according to Miad Maleki<\/a>, an Iranian American sanctions expert formerly at the Treasury Department and now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Iranian rial is already verging on collapse. On the eve of the talks in Pakistan, it traded at 1.5 million to the dollar. \u201cThe blockade makes continued resistance economically impossible,\u201d Maleki said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That night, Trump was back online, this time launching a tirade against the first American Pope, Leo XIV.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,81,10307,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-65855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-iran","9":"tag-politics","10":"tag-pope","11":"tag-trump"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116399611923745453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}