Avast, ye scurvy dogs and ink-stained wretches! Gather ‘round the grog tub, for the winds of the Middle East have taken a turn for the foul, smelling of spent gunpowder and political desperation. The High Admiral of the Persian sands, Ali Khamenei—a man whose beard holds more secrets than Davy Jones’ own locker—has emerged from his cabin to cast a heavy anchor of blame upon the western horizon. He bellows to the gulls and the gods that the former Lord of the Potomac, the Gilded Corsair known as Donald Trump, is the hidden hand behind the bloody mutiny currently rocking the streets of Iran.

Khamenei, standing atop his metaphorical quarterdeck, claims that the deadly protests turning his ports into pits of chaos were not sparked by the cries of his own disgruntled deckhands, but by the invisible whistles of the Orange-Tufted Privateer. According to the Admiral’s proclamations, Trump has been sending secret signals through the digital ether, inciting the common sailors to rise up and scuttle the ship of state. It is a tale as tall as a mast, suggesting that even from his Florida sandcastle, the Gilded Corsair can summon a storm in a Persian teapot just by waving his wig at the moon.

“I’ve seen better diplomacy in a shark-feeding frenzy!” remarked my First Mate, Barnaby 'Barnacles' Bill, while sharpening a cutlass on a piece of stale hardtack. “One of ‘em is a bearded sovereign of the sands who treats dissent like a leaky hull, and the other’s a man who thinks a peace treaty is something you use to wipe a gold-plated brow.” Lord Pumpernickel of the East India Trading Distraction added his own two doubloons, shouting from the rigging: “If Trump is truly the puppet master of these street brawls, then I’m a dancing mermaid with a penchant for knitting! The Admiral’s hull is taking on water from his own mismanagement, and he’s simply pointing at the nearest American shark to distract the crew from the holes in the floorboards.”

The consequences of this war of words are more dangerous than a siren's song during a hurricane. The trade routes for the precious black nectar—that sticky oil that keeps the world’s galleons moving—are being choked by the tension. The merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz are shivering in their timbers, fearing that a stray spark from this rhetoric will set the whole horizon ablaze. If the Admiral decides to lock down the shipping lanes in a fit of pique, we’ll all be drinking seawater and eating our leather boots by the next full moon. Rum prices are already spiking higher than a mainmast, and the black market for Persian rugs is as dry as a desert bone.

So here we sit, caught between a turban and a hard place, watching two old captains throw stones across a very wide ocean. Whether Trump truly did whistle up this storm with a few choice words, or if Khamenei is merely shouting at the clouds to hide the fact that his crew is tired of the lash, the result remains the same: the seas are choppy, the sharks are circling, and the common sailor is the one who ends up in the brine. Keep your powder dry and your eyes on the horizon, for when the titans of the world start pointing hooks, it’s usually the honest swashbucklers who get sent to the locker.