The Strait of Hormuz is about as narrow as a chokepoint gets, and this weekend two governments looked at the same stretch of water and said completely opposite things about it. The US says it’s open. Iran says it’s closed until further notice. Both statements were delivered with total confidence, which is usually the tell that neither one is really describing the water. They’re describing intent. Or maybe just posture.

Whatever the water is actually doing, the air above it got busy fast. What started as a strike on a single ship for taking an “unapproved route” turned, within about a day, into the US hitting more than 140 targets across Iran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard hitting a US base in Jordan, and five more Gulf states (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain) all reporting they’d intercepted something aimed at them. That’s a big jump, shipping dispute to seven-country exchange, and it happened quickly enough that I’m not sure anyone involved fully registered the scale change before it was already the new normal.

The Pope asked for diplomacy, which read almost quaint next to a 140-target strike list. Someone has to say it anyway.

And, separately, oddly: Lindsey Graham died this weekend, days after flying to Kyiv, decades into being maybe Washington’s most durable voice for the idea that America belongs over there, wherever there currently is. Not cause and effect. Just two things true at once, the man who spent a career arguing for intervention gone the same weekend intervention stopped being theoretical for five more countries.

The insurers will decide what “open” actually means. They usually do.

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