Live by the Sword
Tuesday, May 5th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland
‘I’m ‘the most powerful person to ever live.’
—Donald Trump
What do you do with a man like that?
Ashurbanipal might be a good model. He inherited an empire from his father. He is credited, or accused, of being ambitious, ruthless and cruel. He, like Donald Trump, faced challenges. And he, like DJT, thought the best way to deal with them was with superior force.
Ashurbanipal...the most powerful person to live, up until then, which was 669 BC. The Assyrian king fought with Arabs, Aramaeans, Medes, Thebians, Nubians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Cimmerians, Lydians, Chaldeans, Gambulians, Elamites, Indo-Aryans (Iranians) and just about everyone else.
He described his triumphs...
‘I cut off the head of Teumann, their king — the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. Alive, with my hands, I seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain about Susa as with baltu and ashagu. Their blood I let run down the Ulai; its water I dyed red like wool.’
No more Mr. Nice Guy, he! Ashurbonipal had his enemies’ tongues cut out...and flayed alive. God was on his side...anyone who opposed him must be a terrorist, on the outs with Divine Will. From the Nile to the Persian Gulf, no one had seen anything like it!
The Assyrians did to their recalcitrant enemies what POTUS threatened to do to Tehran:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Ashurbonipal didn’t back away from genocide either. His attacks were so thorough, the Elamites soon disappeared from history.
Too bad all that shock and awe didn’t work out better for Ashurbanipal himself. He described what it felt like at the end:
‘I cannot do away with the strife in my country and the dissensions in my family; disturbing scandals oppress me always. Illness of mind and flesh bow me down; with cries of woe I bring my days to an end. I am wretched; death is seizing hold upon me, and bears me down...’
Et tu, Donald? History remembers a whole line of people who were the most powerful who ever lived. Where are they now? However horrible it may be, there is surely room for one more.
But what do you expect? You live by the sword, the blade eventually finds your own neck. Neither Ashurbonipal nor his empire survived the intense world of Near Eastern rivalries. They made enemies of almost all the tribes around them. And after murdering thousands of people...destroying dozens of towns...and salting the earth around many of them, there was bound to be Hell to pay.
In the event, the Assyrian empire may have limped along for another twenty years after Ashurbanipal died. But the glory years were over. And as in so many things in life...including life itself...the end was probably not as much fun as the beginning.
But here we are, more than 2,600 years later...and once again, there’s a bull on the loose in the Near Eastern china shop.
So far, the Iranians have resisted the empire’s demands. They had the cheek to crimp the world’s supply of oil...which caused POTUS to lay siege to the Gulf, trying to cut Iran off from its own oil revenues. And now, with Brent crude trading as high as $114 a barrel, ‘when will things return to normal’ is not so much a question as it is a prayer.
Alas, the answer is ‘never.’
Here is the surprise that may still be underbought – and may mark the end of Trump’s reign. It takes time to deliver and refine oil and petrol-based products. And since the delivery system is sized for regular use, not episodic surges, we can assume that when it gets going again, it will resume its previous rate.
The 900 million barrels that got stuck in the Gulf will not suddenly appear at neighborhood gas stations. The ships that bring them out of the Gulf will not ‘step on the gas.’ Refineries and storage tanks won’t pop their rivets to take in the new supplies.
Instead, it will be as if the oil never existed.
It’s like turning on the water in your shower. It doesn’t matter how long you go without bathing...you still get the same water flow.
Which means, even if the most powerful person who ever lived kissed Ayatollah tomorrow, begging forgiveness from Allah Himself (perhaps aiming for a deal that included 72 virgins in the afterlife) the world would still be minus almost a billion barrels of oil.
How that loss will affect us is our subject for tomorrow...
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Benny and Mossad sold Trump a plan that has backfired. What is he willing to do to save face, and at what cost?
An interesting history review. The key summary of the current situation is it will take a long time to restore the flow of oil to the refineries and the end products to the consumers. Yes it will be painful.
The goal remains, stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. For the sake of the "world", that will be a good result from this "intervention". You are either a sheep or a wolf.....I prefer being a wolf.
As it say in the bible, "there is nothing new under the sun".
Jim Marshall