When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stood before the International Asia-Political Parties Conference in Istanbul on Sunday and threatened to “enter” Israel as Turkey had entered Karabakh and Libya, he gave himself one carefully constructed escape hatch. Had Pakistan not been mediating between Washington and Tehran, he told the audience, Turkey would already have shown Israel its place. It was a line that allowed him to sound like a war leader while behaving like a spectator, and it outsourced his restraint to a diplomatic process happening 2,000 kilometres away in a city he does not control, between two parties whose trust he does not enjoy. Within hours, that escape hatch was gone. The question every audience that matters will now put to Ankara is the simplest and most awkward in politics: did you mean it?

Vice President JD Vance emerged from twenty-one hours of negotiations in Islamabad, told reporters that Iran had refused American terms, gave a thumbs-up to the cameras, and boarded Air Force Two. Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf countered that the Americans had failed to earn Iranian trust. President Trump, posting on Truth Social, announced that the United States Navy would begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz “effective immediately.” US Central Command confirmed it had begun clearing Iranian sea mines from the waterway. Two American guided-missile destroyers had already........

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