Last month, President Donald Trump launched a war against Iran that’s already cost the U.S. an estimated $16 billion and 13 American lives, with over 1,300 killed in Iran. And while most fans of President Trump seem to support his aimless war, at least one advisor is getting extremely nervous. While others are coming up with completely bizarre ideas on how to end it.
David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, made some startling predictions on his All-In podcast on March 13 about the dangers of this war continuing. He warned that escalation in the war could lead to retaliation by Iran against Gulf states that could target not just oil infrastructure but water desalination plants, something that’s already happened.
Noting that Riyadh gets something like 70% of its water from desalination, Sacks warned that destruction of the water infrastructure in the region would “literally render the Gulf almost uninhabitable.”
“I mean, you’re just not going to have enough water for 100 million people, and human beings just cannot survive very long without water,” said Sacks. “So that would be a truly catastrophic scenario, and we’re talking about destroying the Gulf states economically, and then also from a humanitarian perspective.”
Sacks went on to say that it was difficult to tell what was happening in Israel right now with retaliatory attacks by Iran, given the government’s censorship.
“There’s a social media blackout, but what you’re starting to hear trickle out is that Israel is getting hit harder than they’ve ever been hit before in their history,” said Sacks. “And we’re only two weeks into this. If this war continues for weeks or months, then Israel could just be destroyed and are very large parts of it.”
Sacks said Israel could risk “escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic.”
It’s a startling idea from a man who has been nothing but loyal to Trump. Sacks never said anything negative about the president during the podcast episode, but even acknowledging that there could be very bad consequences from this war is something most folks in MAGA-land won’t do.
President Trump is presented with options for ending the war in Iran every day, according to a new report from NBC News, but every time he’s asked about when it will end, he simply says “soon.” And that’s making Americans uneasy, as experts predict that soaring oil prices are likely to cause inflation in every corner of the economy. The national average for a gallon of gasoline is currently $3.71, according to AAA, up from $2.90 before the start of the war on Feb. 28.
Those gas prices are a direct result of Iran blocking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes. Iran has laid mines in the strait and is launching rockets and drones at ships that try to traverse. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House and a fan of Trump, came up with a genius way to solve that problem. Just build a new canal with nuclear bombs. Seriously.
“Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory,” Gingrich tweeted over the weekend. “A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks.”
Gingrich linked to a Substack article that floats the idea in a satirical way—invoking the real 1950s proposal that nuclear explosions could be used for major earth-moving projects with Project Plowshare—but it seems the former speaker didn’t read to the end of the article: “The views expressed above do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cells.”
Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks. https://t.co/Et21kHCiAw
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) March 15, 2026
Trump’s more intelligent and level-headed advisors, if you can call them that, want the president to find an off-ramp, not a canal created with nukes. But even if Trump decides to leave Iran tomorrow, there’s no guarantee things like gas prices will decline or that Iran will be stable in a way that won’t invite more instability.
And then there are the signs that Trump is ready to move on to yet another war after Iran, as he’s signaled repeatedly in recent weeks. Trump said Cuba “is next” and was asked whether his military operation there would look more like Iran or like Venezuela.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. I think I can do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth.”
Cuba’s entire electrical grid went down Monday since an energy blockade enacted by the U.S. has crippled the country economically.
Who knows what comes next? Trump himself probably doesn’t even know at this point. But if you simply take him at his word, he appears bent on world conquest, a bad sign for Americans when you remember how that’s worked out for other empires historically.
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