The Ceasefire He Declared a Triumph Lasted About One Business Day

You know what we call something that goes bad in less than twenty-four hours around here? We call it the Tuesday special. We mark it down, we move it, and we do not put it back on the menu and call it a triumph of the culinary arts.

Yesterday, this man announced a ceasefire like he had personally brokered the peace of the whole Middle East. Ninety minutes before his own deadline, if you recall. Quite a production.

This morning, Iran said the United States violated it. Not bent it. Not nudged it. Violated it. Because — and here is the part that is going to make you set down your biscuit — Israel launched over a hundred strikes on Lebanon. A hundred. Overnight. While the ceasefire was, in theory, in effect.

The IRGC shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The thing we had supposedly just negotiated to keep open. Shut. Back down.

The White House said the Strait wasn’t even closed. Iran said it was. I will let you figure out who I believe, being that I can read and one of those parties just announced a ceasefire that lasted shorter than some haircuts I have given in this parking lot.

The thing about a ceasefire is both sides have to agree to cease the firing. That is right there in the name. It is not a complicated concept. I explained it to my nephew when he was nine and he understood it well enough to stop throwing rocks at his brother for most of the afternoon.

We did not even get most of the afternoon.

Coffee’s hot. World situation is not. Sit down wherever there’s a seat.