A game of chicken

A US-Iranian tit-for-tat in the Strait of Hormuz amounts to a game of chicken that risks spinning out of control. US President Donald Trump’s impatience with the grinding process of indirect negotiations to reopen the strategic Strait and end the Iran war, and the president’s insistence, amplified by senior administration officials, that the United States could revert to military action, enhances the risk. “It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!” Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform, addressing Iran. The tit-for-tat is as much a calibrated effort by both the United States and Iran to frame the exchanges as not rising to the level of a breach of the fragile ceasefire as they are a window on what a revival of hostilities might look like.