When the Iranian delegation flew to Islamabad last weekend, they posted a photograph of a row of empty seats on the aircraft. On the seats they had placed the bloodied belongings and photographs of schoolchildren killed in an American missile strike. It was stagecraft, and it was effective. What Tehran did not post — what it may not yet have fully priced in — was that while it was negotiating inside the Serena Hotel, its host country was moving roughly thirteen thousand troops and up to eighteen fighter jets to an airbase in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, forty kilometres from the Ras Tanura oil terminal the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has already struck.

Pakistan is not a neutral mediator. It is a hidden player. And that is the single most important fact about where this conflict now goes.

A blockade that is not a blockade

The United States Navy’s declared blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, announced by President Trump on Sunday and enforced from Monday morning Washington time, has collapsed into something much narrower than its billing. Central Command has clarified that only ships entering or leaving Iranian ports are being stopped. Freedom of navigation is explicitly preserved for everyone else. In the first twenty-four hours, six merchant vessels turned back peacefully, but sanctioned Iran-linked tankers including the Rich Starry and the Elpis continued to transit the waterway. Brent crude sits near $102, not the $130 spike the headlines implied. Trump himself is now hinting that talks may resume in Pakistan within two days.

For Jerusalem the lesson is uncomfortable. The United States is not executing a coherent coercion strategy against Iran. It is executing a signalling strategy that depends on adversary credulity and allied compliance — and both are eroding in real time.

In Thomas Schelling’s framework, a blockade works as a commitment device only when it is costly enough that a bluffing leader would not dare send it. A move that changes nothing on the water costs nothing to announce and therefore reveals nothing about the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)