The US-Iran war has entered its fourth week, and both sides are now talking — sort of. Iran is demanding transit tolls through the Strait of Hormuz and feels it is owed reparations. Washington responded with a fifteen-point plan that reads less like a negotiation and more like terms of surrender. The yawning gap between those two positions is where this war lives now.

Oil is hovering around $105 a barrel. Parts of Asia are rationing fuel. The ground invasion debate is heating up in Washington, and the historical echoes — Gulf War, Eagle Claw — aren’t reassuring.

We get into what both sides actually want, why the economic pain cuts in directions nobody expected, and whether there’s a best-case scenario that doesn’t leave everyone worse off.

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