Iran-US peace talks in Islamabad collapse, and the Pentagon orders a naval blockade.

Hon, the trouble with a ceasefire that does not stop the squeezing is that, after a few days, you cannot tell the difference between the war and the peace.

The two-week ceasefire announced on April 7 was four days old. The talks, in Islamabad, hosted by Pakistan, with U.S. and Iranian delegations in the same building if not in the same room, broke down on Sunday. The U.S. side said Iran’s submitted plan was not the one that had been agreed as the basis for the negotiations. The Iranian side said it was. Nobody who has ever booked a banquet hall is surprised that two delegations brought two different agendas.

By Monday, the Pentagon announced a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration’s preferred phrasing was enforcement of the existing posture. The functional reality is that ships do not get into Iranian harbors and ships do not leave Iranian harbors. That is a blockade. A blockade is a thing that, in any regular war, is itself an act of war.

Inside this administration, the blockade is presented as compatible with the ceasefire. In the technical reading, this is correct. In the practical reading, it is the kind of phrase that the country’s adversaries clip and replay in three languages.

The Strait of Hormuz, the original deadline, the original red line, is still not, by the President’s own count, open. Oil is at four dollars a gallon. The country, in its grocery aisles, is reading the gas-station signs.

You can argue with a blockade. You can’t argue with the receipt at the register.

That ought to concern you.