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Damned if You Do

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Liz Wolfe | 5.6.2026 9:30 AM

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"Below the threshold":  At a Pentagon briefing yesterday following Iran's attacks on the United Arab Emirates, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters that our adversary's actions were "below the threshold of restarting major combat operations." This shows laudable restraint; it seems the U.S. is interested in shepherding shipping vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz without being pulled back into combat, despite all of Iran's taunts. (Iran's foreign minister said "the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers" and "so should the UAE." I wonder who those mysterious ill-wishers might be!)

The New York Times has warped this restraint into "White House Insists Iran War Is Over, Even While Missiles Fly"—implying that defense officials are delusional vs. choosing not to respond with maximum force to Iran's provocation. ("The White House is turning to rhetorical leaps as President Trump tries to put the biggest political crisis of his presidency behind him," writes the Times' David E. Sanger.)

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President Donald Trump had said, rather clearly, that the ceasefire would be considered violated if the Strait of Hormuz were blocked. But things aren't always so binary, and sometimes you say things as part of a negotiating tactic. It's probably good that Trump has started to move away from some of his initial objectives (like........

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