America actually profits from the high oil prices as a net exporter.
Or he could be running scared of the Epstein files, and desperate to do something - anything - to distract the public.
Or he could just think that his superficial level of understanding is deeper than everyone else's, so anyone who disagrees is wrong or stupid or both.
Or he could know that he doesn't know, but think that he has to look like he knows, because if the image cracks, it's all over.
So, no, blackmail is not the only option that makes sense.
Does keeping Iran from paying terrorists make sense?
Does keeping Iran and it's proxies from killing Americans and civilians from other countries make sense?
All of those things make sense to me. This needed to be done long ago. Every single administration said so.... it's clear as day. But, he finally did it. In a decisive way. I would gladly pay a bit more at the pump so end all of the above.
Now, think of all the protests and political backlash that he got for not helping Palestine more. What Iran is doing to their own people is much worse, IMHO. Not a peep about it from most people. No campuses shut down. No riots. No walk outs.... because it's not Israel doing it.
Go talk to someone from Iran... someone who has family there. They all support Trump on this issue.
This needed to be done. It amazes me how many Americans want us to lose simply because it's Orange Man doing it.
The "terrorist" business? I've seen a rotating cast of "terrorists" over the years. That's pretty obviously villain of the moment propaganda.
Why do (some!) Americans insist on believing Iran was going to obtain nuclear weapons? Netanyahu is repeating the line "Iran will have a nuke in 2 months" for 30 years. American intelligence also showed that Iran was nowhere near building a nuclear weapon.
Frankly, a better question would be to ask why Mango Mussolini tore up the 2016 Iran Nuclear deal (JCPOA).... most likely because it was made by his predecessor.
There's also makeup.
He's obviously got his own high-dollar custom color pallette now, and more-accomplished artists to better co-ordinate with the costumes and the lighting.
No more looking like the average person with that run-of-the-mill plain commodity orange.
Iran is still there, the new leadership is even more anti-US than the old one, the nation sucessfully defended itself by closing the strait.
The US unnecessarily strained all but one (Israel being the exception) of its main allies with the incoherent "we expect your help even though we didn't ask for it and keep dismissing you" statements from the White House directed at NATO, a lot of its allies in the region who got struck directly by Iranian countervalue strikes are wondering what's the point of being allies with the US; the US expended a significant chunk of munitions that will take a long time (I hear "years") to replace; and even the short term benefits[0] coming from the US being a net oil exporter are mostly serving to drive the world to electrify even faster than they already were to reduce oil dependence as much as possible, which means the world is buying even more Chinese PV etc. than before.
[0] which are limited both by Dutch disease and oil being an input for a huge range of products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
I notice no one addressed the issue of them killing 40,000+ of their own citizens.
I've seen estimates that {cost of getting nuked}, even for a moderately powerful nuke (100s of kT, not MT) over Manhattan, the cost of the damage and a proper cleanup of the radioactive contamination is roughly comparable to the US annual GDP*. That makes it worth the cost even if you think there's only a 0.08% chance.
But this is a very naïve approximation, which doesn't account for the geopolitical impact of the US being seen as untrustworthy in its treaties; nor that this is the second time a middle east country that did not actually have nukes was attacked by the US on the basis that they might be making some, while North Korea actually made nukes and has not been attacked as a consequence, and lots of countries may be looking at this as precedent and thinking "we need some nukes" and this overall increases the risk to the USA.
* Can't find it now, but one of my older comments had a link to it, if you go back far enough.
However, the question was not "was Trump wise?", but "was $25bn etc. worth it?"