The article's age (and complete inapplicability by now) is the bigger problem...

Correction: "... a 2-year-old's ..."

It makes no sense to me. Trump is clearly desperate for the strait to be opened again (see his last tweet); the US navy is not able to escort anyone through it without taking huge risks; the insurance backstop is useless- almost no ships passed through the strait, period- the ones that do have an agreement with Iran, not the US. Increased oil prices hurt US citizens almost as much as they hurt everyone else. It all sounds like an attempt to make a quagmire look like 4d chess.

What is happening instead is that Iran is making agreements with various countries to let their ships through. These countries stand to lose it all again in case of a US attack, so they have an interest in trying to stop it.

Not sure what the plan could ever thought to be? Anyone dare to explain this layman?

Make Europe jump to another more solid economic and defense ally? Increasing even further the difficulties to do a preemptive attack?

The whole thing is a whole mess. Why didn't they seized the strait first? Why didn't they secure pathways to their own control first?

I see that not telling any of the allies first was a strategic decision with consequences for decades to come. If not attacking European and Asian economies was not the main goal I can't comprehend what was even the plan.

Or would the plan be creating the scenario for another world war? That is even stupid as it only made the other economies attack to want to retaliate hard. And on the other side would be everyone else with nuclear weapons. The only outcome would be the end of the world.

(To be fair, all mega rich have built super bunkers)

Or “hey stop talking about certain files and look over here instead!”

Mmh yes and no. There are two arms in this hypothesis and you can summarize the second one (the main one) as basically wanting to piss off / punish the Europeans. This is perfectly on point and fits the character.

Occam's razor might well describe actions of a cold calculating leader. But of Trump..?

This fact is mentioned in the text. I don't believe in 4D chess theories and I think what's happening is just a usual chaos. But technically as long as European ships are not passing the theory is not moot since it's main idea is that market fracturing gives Trump adminstration some potential leverages.