Subject: Re: Trump confesses
Actually, they aren't. The XOM I added last January is up 28%.

Actually, they are. Almost all of that gain would have happened before the war started. XOM increased a fair amount before the war started, rising from about $120 in early January to $150 right before the war. Heck, most of that gain happened even before we had relocated resources to the middle east in late January and started pressuring Iran for more talks - XOM had hit $140 by the end of January. By the time the Gerald Ford was ordered to head out there, all the gains had already happened. The war itself, and the blocking of the Strait, has had no discernible benefit for XOM's stock price.

We can speculate all day.

It's not just speculating. Your theory of Trump's motivation simply doesn't make any sense. It's completely inconsistent with everything we know about Trump, the political incentives he and his Administration face, and what would benefit him personally. There's no plausible reason at all why he would want to fail to reopen the Strait, and would be deliberately trying not to succeed at negotiations.