Iran’s war didn’t end. It changed units.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard last Saturday fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer. CENTCOM says both ships evaded; the IRGC says both were hit and fled the area. Neither claim is independently verified. What CENTCOM publicly confirmed was its response: Adm. Brad Cooper announced a ratio on the record — “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours”, and U.S. forces disabled two Iranian tankers near Kharg and Jask and sank a third in the Gulf of Oman. It was the sharpest exchange since direct fighting resumed last week, after more than a month without a U.S.-Iran exchange of that kind.

It also came a week after Trump posted an AI-generated video claiming Iran’s Kharg Island terminal had been “blown to smithereens.” Reuters found no evidence that the terminal had been destroyed, and Iran’s state oil company called the claim “laughable.” The days that followed brought a declaration that Iran was “officially a Failed Nation,” then a call for Iranians to “rise up and fight.”

Six months in, that sequence tells you something real. So far, Washington has hit Iranian tankers rather than the Kharg terminal itself. Trump, meanwhile, claimed terminal destruction that public reporting did not substantiate. Iran contested even the battle-damage assessment of an exchange it initiated. None of it identifies which side is closer to the threshold that would force a change in course. Both governments are fighting as if they already know.

Iran’s........

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