Is it too late for us all to enrol at Hogwarts? I’m only asking because it feels like studying Divination might be the most useful thing we can do to predict the future trajectory of Operation Epic Fury. If you’re unfamiliar with the Hogwarts curriculum, Divination was the subject that equipped Harry Potter with skills such as reading tea leaves, gazing into crystal balls and decoding prophecies. Increasingly, these are looking like our best bet to understanding the contradictory and confusing announcements regarding the war with Iran that are emanating from the White House.
Recent examples include high-level peace talks between the US and Iran that may or may not be taking place, the US sending thousands of additional troops to the Middle East (despite the fact Donald Trump has already declared victory), and claims of Iran bestowing an expensive mystery gift on the president. Trump initially refused to reveal what the gift was, while continuing to insist that it had been given in good faith by the de facto leadership of a country on which he’s dropping Tomahawk missiles and whose unofficial national motto is “Death to America”.
The odds of the gift being a flying Persian rug that would drop Trump in the Strait of Hormuz seemed worthy of a bet on Kalshi, but Trump later claimed the gift was safe passage through the Strait for an initial 10 oil tankers, followed by a further 20 tankers announced on Monday. Trump said these alleged gifts were a demonstration of respect by Iran towards the US and proof that negotiations to end the war are going swimmingly. Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament’s Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on X that: “No negotiations have been held with the US, and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
Ghalibaf appears to have a point about the manipulation of markets, which despite Trump’s decades-long history of lying, continue to swing wildly based on his every utterance. This is presumably due to the respect global markets still have for the gravitas of the office of the president of the United States, even though the man currently occupying the office has none. Unfortunately, it’s also proof that while oil might be in short supply, there is a worldwide glut of complicity and credulity by serious people and institutions when it comes to reactions to the fabulist-in-chief.
A week ago, Trump posted on social media that the US and Iran had held productive talks about a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES”, and the soaring price of oil promptly took a dive. On Sunday, Trump whipsawed, saying that he wanted to “take the oil in Iran” while threatening to blow up Iranian energy infrastructure. Oil immediately jumped back up to almost $US117 ($169) per barrel.
Financial traders’ current methodology seems closer to reading tea leaves than anything Adam Smith ever advocated. In their defence, the practice of reading tea leaves involves searching for meaning in murky slop, which is not dissimilar to scanning Trump’s Truth Social posts for insight. Regardless, we’re now in the bizarre position of having the global economy held hostage by Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and Trump, who appears to be in conflict with both Iran and himself.
Further complicating matters is the weird co-dependent loop that Trump and the markets are caught in, with the markets looking to Trump, while Trump often appears to be guided by the markets. This means that both the markets and Trump are uncertain as to which of them is the crystal ball, casting the rest of us in the role of exhausted fortune-tellers, who are starting to think it won’t be so bad if forecasting the future of humanity is one of the jobs that gets outsourced to AI.
Caught between the US and Iran’s opposing narratives, financial markets aren’t the only key actors floundering. Consider the recent visit to the Oval Office by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who seemingly read the tea leaves left behind in the cups of other leaders during tumultuous visits to the Oval Office. Japan has friendly relations with Iran and sources over 90 per cent of its oil from the Middle East, yet Takaichi made the ignoble, if self-preserving, decision to buy into Trump’s self-aggrandising fantasies, proclaiming: “I firmly believe it is only you, Donald, who can achieve peace across the world.”
Forced to react to, and take seriously, every mendacious utterance by Trump, both institutions and world leaders are lagging far behind the post-truth Trumpian reality that we all now live in. Trump has promised to “keep bombing our little hearts out” but also said “I think we’ll make a deal with them, pretty sure, but it’s possible we won’t”, which sent everyone scrambling for their tea cups and crystal balls again.
As both the war and the “he said / he said” dynamic between an inveterate liar and a murderous regime grind on, it’s impossible to determine who’s telling the truth in this apocalyptic parlour game of riddle-speak. With misleading statements and outright lies now passing for wartime communication, pledging allegiance to Trump’s magical thinking risks obscuring real-world suffering – which no one needs a crystal ball to see.
Melanie La’Brooy is a novelist who writes on politics and social justice issues.
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