Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has issued an ultimatum to Iran in the wake of the terrorists’ firing on one of our aircraft carriers and a guided-missile destroyer.

It’s simple: if Iran shoots at US ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers. All they have to do is not shoot at [the] US Navy[.]

That’s nice. Here’s a much better alternative, though. How about instead of, within Hegseth’s (and his boss, President Donald Trump’s (R)) preferred parameters of tit-for-tat, the Navy administered an extensive series of love taps on the sites from which attacks on our Navy might come, while simultaneously seizing the Iranian tankers, rather than destroying and sinking them?

The seized oil could be sold on at market prices, and the money used to help defray the cost of the Navy’s deployment into the Arabian Sea and Arabian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The tankers themselves could be sold on (perhaps to US shippers to facilitate Jones Act shipping) or sent to American breakers to be sold for scrap, and the money from this used as prize money for the sailors involved.