Washington is engaged in more conflicts simultaneously than at any time since Donald Trump came back to office and the toll is beginning to take a physical and mental toll. A bill introduced in the Senate this week that was signed onto by over 60 lawmakers wants to impose a 100 percent tariff on oil purchases from five countries that purchase Russian oil: India, China, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan. However, the list is conveniently excluding those European countries that continue to import Russian gas. The bill is named for late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Democrat Richard Blumenthal of California, and is introduced five months after Trump personally reached a deal with India's Narendra Modi that lowered the tariff rate to 18 percent from an exorbitant 50 percent, in return for New Delhi scaling back Russia's crude purchases and agreeing to buy more than 500 billion dollars in American energy, technology and agricultural goods. That deal was supposed to put an end to it. Rather, it has been reopened on Capitol Hill and the optics are unmissable: the same capital that lauded India as a ‘trusted partner' in February is now threatening to do the same to Beijing.

The number has been extremely volatile all year long, dropping as low as 25 percent, rising as high as 50 percent, falling back to 18 percent, and now proposed by the League of Nations to go back to 100 percent inside of eighteen months. That kind of whiplash is the Indian exporter's own tax for electronics, pharma, apparel and gems and jewellery. The United States has dubbed the relationship with India a strategic partnership, and imported nearly 95 billion dollars in goods from the country last year. But, whatever it takes to say, whether it is an Obama or a Trump memorandum, a tariff policy that resets each month depending on which party controls the Senate has a message for India. So far New Delhi has managed to respond with the measured response that can be expected, and continued to diversify its energy supply, too, shifting towards the US and Venezuela, but the message of this episode will likely not have gone unnoticed by the policymakers: Reliance on the friendly face of any single power is a thin cover for economic planning.

This tariff battle is taking place against the backdrop of a Middle East that has escalated from a ceasefire into a full-scale conflict, and back again, in one month's span. The truce which was brokered in mid-June following an extended mediation by Pakistan and signing of a memorandum of understanding in Islamabad, has now broken down. Iran's deputy foreign minister on Saturday said that Tehran was halting its obligations under that deal because of renewed sanctions by Washington. The US has since launched a series of attacks on Iranian military targets, including the destruction of a surveillance tower to monitor shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and a 20 percent transit tax on ships passing through the strait, in a single night's raid. Iran has also attacked commercial tankers, and, in turn, has struck targets in Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, while disabling two supertankers – allegedly in Omani waters, the UAE says.

This cycle is packed with a real and unquenched partisanship within Trump's own camp about how far the struggle should continue. But in a recently popular post on Joe Rogan's podcast, Vice President JD Vance insisted the U.S. would not launch ground troops into Iran for regime change, which is stepping ahead of where Trump has left the door open. Trump's response to ground troops has been, "I'm not putting troops anywhere," and in the same breath, "if I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you. Trump, at his club in Doral, admitted to Vance that they had "philosophically a little bit" different views on Iran than he did, but said there was no "real" split. But the Pentagon has not ruled anything out: thousands of Marines are already aboard amphibious assault ships, and as early as this year the Pentagon had toyed with the idea of deploying up to 17,000 more ground troops in the area, using the 82nd Airborne's Global Response Force. Vance is also accused of disagreeing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the level of commitment to be made in supporting Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the two men being viewed as competing for the 2028 Republican nomination.

The broader area is adjusting around this larger-scale issue and conflict. Israeli President Isaac Herzog this week made a rare interview with Saudi television channel Al Arabiya to urge for some greater progress towards normalisation with Riyadh, describing it as his "dream". Saudi Arabia's own former intelligence chief has said the kingdom will not consider any peace deal with Israel until the Jewish state acts like “a normal country,” while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directly shot down the idea to Trump at the White House. Before his death, Graham was said to be quietly pursuing this line of work as his final diplomatic campaign, which now lacks its chief architect. Meanwhile, Pakistan is overstretched; it has a 900 kilometre border with Iran, it has a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia, it brokered the collapsed ceasefire; and it is dealing with its own conflict with Afghanistan while attempting to bring both Washington and Tehran back to the table, neither of which is keen to be there.

One constant in all of this is China. Although Beijing continues to be Iran's single biggest buyer of crude, it has reduced its oil imports to about 40 percent of pre-war levels, using up stockpiles and shifting to Russian crude to mitigate the price and supply risk of the Strait of Hormuz. Unfortunately, this curtailment has been the very same restriction which has been able to keep global oil prices in check for everyone else, including India. It also implies that Beijing is monitoring Washington's threats to impose 100 percent tariffs on Russian-oil buyers while privately hedging its bets, which is telling because the nations listed in the Senate bill aren't all equally affected by the threat.