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

A republic proclaims the sovereignty of its people while its executive alone names the state of war and peace, a custom more telling than any written law.

Millions consent to be governed by the fear of a few ships in a distant strait, a servitude chosen long before the first shot was fired.

One man in an office speaks the word 'ceasefire' while another, smelling of salt and oil, feels the deck shudder beneath his feet.

Two contradictory reports of an event cannot both be true, but the geometry of power ensures both will be believed by their respective audiences.

Fear of the unseen missile is but a superstition, for it is only atoms moving through the void according to knowable physical laws.

The spontaneous action of sailors in a narrow channel reveals more of imperialism's logic than a decade of diplomatic communiqués.

Every statesman knows in his heart that the noble principle is merely the excuse he gives himself for the base action he craves.

From this deck, the political declaration is a thin sound against the thick smell of burning fuel and the taste of salt spray.

In the markets of Hormuz, the price of dates holds steady, a more reliable measure of peace than any proclamation from Washington.

The real force here is not ideology but the simple, brutal economics of who controls the oil and who freezes without it.

Observe how the spiral of escalation follows the same mathematical pattern as water swirling down a drain, relentless and inevitable.

Nothing so confirms the durability of a peace like two great powers enthusiastically firing munitions at each other to preserve it.

Did my son die for a principle that allows men in offices to call war peace whenever it suits their reelection?

A nation that found its unity in a revolutionary war now demands the world accept its definition of peace at the mouth of a cannon.