Less than 48 hours after issuing a 48-hour ultimatum for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its energy infrastructure, Donald Trump stepped back and granted the country a reprieve of five days – a now familiar pattern in Trump’s online diplomacy. In doing so, he dropped what can only be described as a different kind of bomb: an all-caps public declaration that negotiations with Tehran were already underway. No detail was given. Only the assertion that talks were ‘good and productive’.

Systems built on religious legitimacy do not simply vanish under external pressure. They adapt

Systems built on religious legitimacy do not simply vanish under external pressure. They adapt

The effect was immediate and disorienting. Confusion spread outward in concentric circles. Within Iran’s leadership, where pressure and suspicion already run high, this kind of ambiguity is corrosive. When signals shift without explanation, loyalty becomes a liability. Every official is forced to ask whether someone else knows more or has already moved first. No doubt this is part of Trump’s calculation.

Beyond Iran, the same dislocation took hold in a more familiar form. Politicians and commentators scrambled to interpret Trump’s move. It could be a sign of any number of things: strategic deception, energy price management, diplomatic breakthrough, miscalculation or capitulation. All these explanations surfaced at once, none could be confirmed. And that ambiguity is the point. This is how Trump keeps the world guessing.

Trump has never treated the media as a channel for conveying settled policy, he treats it as an instrument. His announcements shape expectations and trigger reactions. The press participates, often blindly, because the tempo is being set elsewhere. By now, there can be no doubt that this is part of Trump’s method, yet other actors, still playing by the old rules, have no choice but to react.

Keir Starmer’s........

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