He Said Iran Wanted a Deal. Iran Said That's Fake News.

Sugar, let me tell you about a certain kind of customer. You’ve seen them. Comes in, sits down, tells everybody at the counter he just closed the biggest deal of his life. Buys a round of coffee. Real magnanimous about it. You can tell he believes every word.

Then somebody calls his bluff, and it turns out there was no deal. There was barely a conversation.

That happened yesterday. Except instead of a coffee counter, it was the global oil market.

The president posted that he’d had “very good and productive conversations” with Iran about the Strait of Hormuz. Stocks went up. Oil prices dropped. Real money moved in real time because of what he typed on his phone.

And then Iran opened their mouth.

“There is no dialogue,” they said. Zero. None. The Iranian government said there were no conversations happening. Their parliament called it — and they used these words specifically — “fake news intended to manipulate financial and oil markets.”

Now, Iran said fake news. Iran. The country that just vowed to close the Strait forever. When the people you’re in a standoff with are calling you out for making things up about the standoff, something has gone sideways.

I don’t know whose money moved on that oil drop. I don’t know who was positioned to benefit when prices lurched around based on a post that turned out to have no basis in reality. I’m just a waitress. But I know that when the story you tell causes real financial consequences for real people, and the other party says it never happened, that is not a misunderstanding.

That’s something else.

You need anything else, hon, or are you just going to sit there and think about it?