{"id":175567,"date":"2026-03-13T16:15:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=175567"},"modified":"2026-03-14T15:27:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:27:53","slug":"how-do-the-msm-know-trump-doesnt-have-a-plan-for-the-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=175567","title":{"rendered":"How do the MSM know Trump doesn’t have a plan for the Strait of Hormuz?"},"content":{"rendered":"

They don’t know. They infer.
\nMost mainstream reporters covering the Strait of Hormuz question work from three signals.
\nThe first is bureaucratic. In Washington reporting, journalists treat the visible behavior of institutions as a proxy for the existence of a plan. If the Pentagon, State Department, and National Security Council are publicly aligned, giving detailed briefings, and rolling out phased objectives, reporters assume a coherent strategy exists. If messaging is inconsistent or officials speak anonymously about confusion, reporters infer the opposite. When they say Trump “has no plan,” they usually mean the normal bureaucratic indicators of a plan are missing.
\nThe second is historical. Trump’s first term created a template in the media ecosystem. His style relied heavily on improvisation, personal signaling, and tactical moves rather than the traditional process of publishing doctrine papers or coordinated interagency strategy. Because that pattern existed before, journalists use it as a baseline assumption. When new crises emerge, they start with the hypothesis that the same style still operates.
\nThe third is coalition incentives inside media. Most national security reporters are plugged into the professional defense and diplomacy networks that value predictability, formal planning, and institutional continuity. Those networks include former officials, think tank analysts, and military officers who brief reporters. When those sources say privately that they are unsure what the White House intends to do, the resulting coverage frames the situation as “no strategy.”
\nThis is where an Alliance Theory<\/a> lens helps. From that perspective, the press does not verify whether a plan exists. It reports the perceptions of the coalition it relies on. If the national security bureaucracy feels excluded from the decision process, its members tell reporters there is no plan. The media publishes that judgment.
\nBut a plan can exist in two different forms. One is the traditional bureaucratic plan: detailed phases, war games, interagency memos, congressional briefings. That is the model reporters expect. The other is what you might call a political signaling strategy, one built on ambiguity, personal deterrence, and shifting statements that keep adversaries uncertain. Trump has often favored this second style. If the strategy rests on controlled unpredictability, it will look exactly like chaos from the outside.
\nThere is also a deeper structural reason the press defaults to skepticism. The Strait of Hormuz ranks among the most sensitive choke points in the global economy. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows through it. Any credible U.S. strategy would involve classified naval deployment plans, contingency strikes against Iranian coastal batteries, coordination with Gulf states, and backchannel diplomacy with China and India to manage oil markets. Almost all of that would be secret.
\nJournalists are left with partial signals and elite gossip. They fill the gaps with interpretation. So when you read that Trump “has no plan,” translate it as something narrower. It usually means the reporters’ sources inside the national security establishment either do not see the plan or were not involved in making it.
\nAaron MacLean writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

If the commitment to clear the strait for traffic is made, doing so will be a two-phase operation. Whether or not the United States has made that decision, we are effectively already in the first phase. Before escort operations can begin, Iran\u2019s stores of ship-killers need to be reduced to manageable numbers through an air campaign. The president has spoken repeatedly about going after mines and the boats that lay them, and this is a vital part of just such preparatory work. Add to that stockpiles of drones, drone boats, cruise missiles, the command and control facilities of the units that launch them, the personnel themselves, and so forth\u2014all of these kinds of targets would need to be hit and hit again until they can no longer be useful to the fight….
\nIf one were to attempt to sail through the strait right now, even under U.S. naval escort, the Iranians could potentially swarm convoys with enough projectiles that eventually something gets through\u2014possibly even damaging the naval escorts themselves.
\nA failure like this could harm confidence in the operation, to say the least, and set everything back weeks. The Navy will want to be in a position where Iran\u2019s capability to strike will be limited enough that our capacity to intercept will be able to handle the incoming…
\nInterception of incoming fire will be only part of the tactical puzzle. The hard military reality is that the ships under escort will effectively be bait as the U.S. Navy and the Iranians battle around them. Like a mother duck and her ducklings, naval escorts and commercial shipping will transit the strait under layers of air cover and persistent drone surveillance of the Iranian coast. When Iranian forces emerge to take a shot of any kind, our military will attempt to kill whoever is doing the shooting. And if present-day military technology expands the toolkit of Iran\u2019s offensive assets, the ability to keep drone surveillance in the sky constantly, comprehensively, and at relatively low cost is a big advantage to the United States, unavailable during the days of Earnest Will.
\nIt could be several weeks before escort operations begin in the Gulf, and then the operation could continue indefinitely, and at substantial expense. This cost would need to be weighed against the economic damage, and the political risk, of the strait remaining closed. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They don’t know. They infer. Most mainstream reporters covering the Strait of Hormuz question work from three signals. The first is bureaucratic. In Washington reporting, journalists treat the visible behavior of institutions as a proxy for the existence of a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t