The President Threatened Iran on Truth Social, Again.

I count the deadlines now. It is like keeping the tip jar.

Sunday night, the President went on Truth Social and told Iran the clock was ticking. He used all capital letters. He said if Iran did not move FAST, there would not be anything left of them. He added that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

It was, by my count, his eighth or ninth such warning this year. I might be off by one.

Monday morning, the markets dropped. Oil prices jumped. The Washington Post and The Hill both ran the same quote three different ways. People who trade oil futures for a living watched the screen and made small notes.

Then everyone went back to whatever they were doing before Sunday night.

The pattern.

Last month the ceasefire was on “life support.” Two weeks before that the Iranian counter-proposal was “totally unacceptable.” Before that, the Strait of Hormuz had forty-eight hours to open or get hit. The forty-eight hours expired and the Strait kept doing what it does. Before that, Iran had “apologized and surrendered,” which Iran did not appear to know about.

Every one of those posts moved oil prices. Every one of those deadlines got pushed.

What this looks like from a diner.

You learn to read a tip pretty fast. The guy who walks out without leaving anything has done it before. The guy who threatens to leave nothing and then leaves nothing is honest. The guy who threatens to leave nothing for the fourteenth Sunday in a row and then leaves a five is doing something else. He is using the threat as the tip.

That is what Sunday looked like from out here. The threat is the post. The post is the policy. Oil prices are the receipt.

Markets, briefly.

Asian stocks retreated. Brent and WTI ticked up. The Strait of Hormuz, per The Hill’s coverage, did its normal Monday shipping volume.

A reader could be forgiven for thinking the President was negotiating with the oil futures market and using Iran as a megaphone.

A reader would not be wrong.