On: What we know about the latest exchange of fire between the US and Iran

Diary Entry

Another exchange of fire in the Strait of Hormuz, another round of contradictory statements - each side insisting on its own version of reality while the machinery of war hums quietly in the background. What strikes me is not the violence itself, but the way it is framed, the way the very concept of “ceasefire” is stretched and hollowed out until it means nothing at all. A ceasefire is not a pause in war; it is the absence of war. But here, it has become a rhetorical device, a way for both sides to claim restraint while continuing to escalate.

The real work of hegemony is not in the missiles but in the language. The U.S. insists the ceasefire holds - meaning, of course, that its actions do not count as violations, only Iran’s do. The ruling class does not need to lie outright; it merely needs to define the terms of debate so that its violence is always justified, always defensive, always an exception rather than the rule. The Iranian regime, for its part, mirrors this logic - each side locked in a dance of mutual reinforcement, each reinforcing the other’s narrative of righteous resistance or necessary intervention.

And the people? They are told to accept this as normal, as inevitable. The Strait of Hormuz is not a geography but a theater, a stage where the same play is performed again and again - each time with slightly different props, but the same script. The war of position has already been lost here, not on the battlefield but in the minds of those who have come to believe that this is simply how the world works. The interregnum is not coming; it is here. The old order of Cold War binaries is dead, but what replaces it is not peace - only a more diffuse, more chaotic violence, dressed in the language of stability.

The tragedy is not that they are shooting at each other. The tragedy is that we have all been taught to expect it.