Trump 'Panicking' With 'No Plan' on Hormuz as He Loses Control of the Iran War, Lawmakers Say

The Strait of Hormuz does not usually feature in domestic political anxiety. It is a narrow stretch of water, distant and abstract to most voters. Yet when oil prices spike and markets shudder, its importance becomes brutally clear — and suddenly, so does the cost of getting strategy wrong.

In recent days, Donald Trump's handling of the crisis there has felt less like a coherent plan and more like a series of improvised reactions, stitched together under pressure. The effect is jarring. One moment, he is hinting at winding down the war with Iran; hours later, he is threatening to 'obliterate' the country's power plants if the strait is not reopened within 48 hours.

It is not merely an inconsistency. It is something closer to drift.

Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts said that Trump 'has no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so he is threatening to attack Iran's civil power plants.'

'This would be a war crime,' he said.

Likewise, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut commented on Trump's Iran war plan: 'He's lost control of the war and he is panicking.'

Trump's Shifting Strategy Leaves Allies Guessing

Over the course of a week, the US president has cycled through options with a speed that suggests urgency, if not outright alarm. Diplomatic overtures came first — a proposed international coalition to secure the strait. That idea faltered when allies declined to sign up. Trump then suggested the US could handle the situation alone, before pivoting again, implying other nations should take responsibility.

At one point, he even floated the notion that the waterway might simply 'open itself'. It was an odd remark, almost offhand, and one that did little to reassure those watching closely.

Criticism has been sharp and not confined to political opponents. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, offered a pointed reminder on ABC's 'This Week': 'You can't all of a sudden walk away after you've kind of created the event and expect other people to pick it up.'

That observation cuts to the heart of the problem. What this reveals is not just a disagreement over tactics, but a broader uncertainty about whether there is a defined endgame at all. For a conflict now entering its fourth week, that absence is becoming harder to ignore.

Trump's Ultimatum Raises Legal And Moral Questions

The most controversial turn came with Trump's ultimatum to Iran — a threat delivered in Truth Social with characteristic bluntness while he was in Florida. 'If Iran doesn't FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time,' he warned, or 'the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!'

It is the choice of target that has unsettled legal experts. Military infrastructure is one thing; civilian energy systems, which power hospitals and homes, are another entirely.

Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a former US Army lieutenant colonel, did not mince words. The proposal, he suggested, had the feel of 'ready, fire, aim'. More seriously, he warned that such strikes could constitute a war crime if they failed to meet the strict threshold of military necessity over civilian harm.

That threshold is notoriously difficult to justify. The laws governing armed conflict are designed, at least in principle, to draw a line between military objectives and civilian life. Blurring that line is not a trivial matter.

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations has already framed the threat in those terms, describing any deliberate targeting of power plants as inherently indiscriminate. Given the recent backlash over a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, the optics alone are grim.

And yet, within Trump's circle, the argument is framed differently. Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, defended the approach in an interview with CNN by claiming Iran's Revolutionary Guard controls much of the country's infrastructure and uses it to sustain the war effort. The implication is clear: the distinction between civilian and military targets is blurred beyond recognition.

That claim may resonate politically, but it does not settle the legal debate.

Trump's Mixed Signals Deepen Economic And Military Uncertainty

If the military messaging has been erratic, the economic policy has not been much steadier. In a bid to ease surging energy prices, the administration has lifted sanctions on some Iranian oil for the first time in decades — a move intended to push more supply into global markets.

It is a curious contradiction. Iran is, in Trump's own words, 'the head of the snake for global terrorism'. Yet the same administration is now facilitating the sale of its oil, albeit under controlled conditions.

Even within Republican ranks, that inconsistency has not gone unnoticed. Representative Nancy Mace captured the mood succinctly as she posted on X: 'Bombing Iran with one hand and buying Iran oil with the other.'

The policy's practical impact remains uncertain. Analysts suggest the additional supply may do little to offset the broader disruption caused by instability in the strait. Oil markets are global, and even modest disruptions can ripple widely.

Meanwhile, the military footprint is expanding rather than shrinking. The Pentagon has deployed additional warships and around 2,500 Marines to the region, bringing the total number of personnel supporting the conflict to roughly 50,000. That is not the posture of a war winding down, whatever the rhetoric might suggest.

There is, in all of this, a sense of a presidency caught between competing pressures — economic, political, strategic — without a clear hierarchy of priorities. The language shifts. The policies follow. The direction, however, remains elusive.

And for a conflict centred on one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, that uncertainty is not just a political problem. It is a global one.