Am I the only one who finds this disingenuous? It's like saying: "the police's arrival to the bank robbery took someone hostage." The police's arrival may have triggered the hostage taker's actions but it was still their actions. It's like the author let their dislike of Trump get in the way of accuracy.
It's easy enough to argue that the war is a disaster without being misleading about who did what.
In short, this is basic cause and effect. We can easily say the attacks closed the straight.
If you want, we can change the moral insinuations. "The bully hit himself in the face." No, the poor kid being teased hit the bully in the face.
And in fact, rhetorical tools like that make it easier for people who disagree with the authors stance to discard the author's argument on the whole. "This person either doesn't understand the situation well enough, or is willingly lying to me. Why would I listen to them."
In your example, the bank robbers started the situation.
Who started the war again? Was it Iran that started bombing the US unprovoked, or the US that started bombing Iran unprovoked?
Trump said he started the war because Iran was about to nuke the United States, despite months before saying their nuclear programs were totally obliterated, and his own DNI stating there was no evidence Iran had actually restarted their nuclear programs. Once again, who is the but-for cause of our current state of affairs?
It is absolutely not misleading to point the blame of the current state of affairs at Trump. We wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for his extreme incompetence. We didn't have to start this war, its his war of choice. If you stick your hand in a blender and turn it on you don't blame the blender for your mangled hand. The Straight being closed was an obvious out come of his actions, he was made aware of it, and he started the war anyway despite the US not needing to be involved. He himself campaigned on not getting involved in scenarios exactly like this.
> the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz
Trump's choices and actions directly led to the situation we're in, right? As in, if he didn't choose to start an ill-planned war based off lies, we wouldn't be here, correct? Is there any part of the above that's actually incorrect or untrue? Iran wouldn't have just closed the Strait for giggles would they? So why is the Straight closed again? Because Trump is a gullible moron or is deeply compromised by Israel. Or potentially both!
> Iran has agency
Trump has had agency as well throughout this whole thing, and continues to be involved in an illegal war he chose to start on the other side of the planet. The US doesn't need to continue to be involved, it didn't need to start the war in the first place.
If the goal is truly to look at this without moral bias and just examine the causal chain of events, those analogies don't work. There is no geopolitical equivalent of your examples without bias. It's two competing states engaged in an escalating conflict. When you use analogies that bake in a "good guy/bad guy" dynamic, it introduces the exact moral framing you stated you were trying to avoid.
You were responding to this:
> the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz
Instead of morally biased analogies, why not just explain what you believe is the actual case?
In your analogy, the crims performed the burglary. That lead to the police arriving. That lead to the police closing the street. You can argue that the crims "didn't close the street", and sure, they didn't. But the street is closed purely as a result of their actions.