LET THE POSTURING CONTINUE.

Trust a quartet of Washington Post reporters to put the most favorable spin on it.  "Under pressure, Iran lashes out and ramps up rhetoric."  I suspect they're running out of gas mains to dig up and pack with propellant.  But whatever.  "Amid economic pressure and a fight to retain diplomatic leverage via control over the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is lashing out with increasingly bellicose rhetoric and, on Thursday, a strike on U.S. forces in Kuwait."

It's the nature of the men of Asia Minor to posture and bellow.

Rather than capitulate, Iran is taking a more bullish stance, as it has in pivotal moments throughout the conflict. Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Thursday that "America's new crimes against the Iranian nation have changed our security equations and defense doctrine."

Iran's strategy, he said in a post on X, would now be "asymmetrical," and he warned: "The Americans should start thinking about stockpiling gasoline and fuel; dark months await the American economy."

Where, pray, is a contemporary Indiana Jones to shrug his shoulders and pull his pistol?

The Trump administration appears to see that "momentum is on their side" because of the increases in traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and the impact of the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, said Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group, a think tank. Iran's leaders may dispute the specifics, he said, but recognize the risks to their leverage and want to "show they still have cards to play."

"They want to show that they are not risk-averse or deterred," he said. "And that they are going to try and impose their own costs on the U.S."

Those include damage to U.S. allies in the Gulf, U.S. bases in the region and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Ali Vaez, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, said Iran is "willing to take bigger and bigger risks to break the blockade."

"In a way, the more that President Trump succeeds in putting economic pressure on Iran, the more he fails by compelling Iranians to resort to force," he said.

I'm not sure that firing missiles and drones that are unreliable even by the charitable standards one applies to the third world qualifies as "taking bigger risks."  But thinking like a jihadi is never something I was very good at.

A CNN analysis gives the state of play as "The US wants to manage the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran wants to break it."  I've played enough competitive chess to be irritated when people use "stalemate" to refer to a drawn position where each side has equal strength and neither is able to force the next small advantage.  In chess, a stalemate arises when one player has no legal move, and there are many problems in the chess column where the weaker side runs the stronger side out of moves, thus securing half a point, rather than suffering checkmate.

In chess terms, Iran's shipping is stalemated.  Increasing volumes of crude oil, and I hope, fertilizer what with the southern hemisphere's planting season beginning, are clearing Hormuz whilst there's nothing moving out of Iran.

"So far, both have largely concentrated their attacks on military rather than civilian or energy targets. And despite threats from senior Iranian officials, Tehran has not resumed attacks against Saudi Arabia or the UAE," said Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence, in a post on X.

Nonetheless, the current situation is perilous, with room for miscalculation that risks pulling both sides back into all-out conflict.

That's growth on Mr Citrinowicz's part, contrasted with his pessimism in May and July.  That May post concluded, Iran right now is not focused on supporting war via proxies across the globe. They are focused on the survival of the Islamic Republic. That in itself is progress."  The volume of threats out of Teheran is far out of proportion to the success of their Hezbollah gangbangers defending their version of the Alpine Redoubt in south central Lebanon.

Let the thing be pressed.