Saturday evening, as I was getting out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, President Trump posted the following message:

Analysts have differing views as to what this portends.

WSJ Washington bureau chief Damian Paletta (“Did Trump Finally Find an Offramp for the Iran War?“) is cautiously optimistic:

Whether that’s the true state of the talks or not is unclear, and Trump has alleged that these very things have been agreed to in the past, when in fact they haven’t. But it does appear that Iran and Oman, which essentially govern the land along the Strait of Hormuz, are in pretty advanced talks about how to govern it going forward. If a military cooling-off period helps them achieve those goals, then Trump could claim victory.

But this development comes just days after Iran has continued trying to strike U.S. bases in the Middle East, and just a few weeks after Iran killed three U.S. servicemembers in Jordan. And there are growing signs pointing to Iran having played a major role in recent cyberattacks on U.S. water systems.

It won’t take long to determine whether this truly is [the] beginning of the end, or just another pause in the long, drawn-out, messy war.

NYT opinion columnist David French (“The War That Could Swallow the World“), by contrast, makes McKayla Maroney look enthusiastic.

[President Trump] thought he could topple a vicious, deeply embedded authoritarian regime with a few targeted airstrikes and a fantasized popular uprising. As he has said many times, he expected a version of his Venezuela outcome, and when the Venezuela strategy failed, if “strategy” is the word, there was no real Plan B — other than to bomb Iran more and hope for capitulation.

[…]

But the problem we face right now is something well beyond deals. America has been so powerful for so long that we are accustomed to being in control of events. We start wars when we want and — crucially — we believe that we can end them when we want.

[…]

That is no longer the case. The world is walking a path toward a world war, and no one — including the president of the United States — seems to be in command of events.

Consider these developments. Not only does Iran continue to strike American bases effectively; it has also relentlessly attacked American partners across the region. These attacks are doing immense damage to oil and gas facilities and — combined with Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz — are placing the world economy at risk.

The Houthis have entered the conflict, expanding the fighting into the Red Sea, and now Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning a large-scale attack on Houthi territory, including, potentially, the use of ground forces to attempt to break the Houthi shipping blockade.

Ukraine struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, the immense body of water that borders Russia and Iran. Ukraine said it did this because the ship was carrying military equipment between the two countries.

Russia and China may be assisting the Iranian military by providing satellite imagery and other assistance that renders Iranian missile and drone attacks more effective. Reuters has also reported that China is sending Iran hundreds of surface-to-air missiles.

[…]

Let’s put all this together: The initial American strategy failed, the war with Iran is consuming the entire region, Iran and Ukraine are risking a face-off, there is evidence that both Russia and China are escalating their military commitments, American munitions stocks are dwindling, and Trump is raging.

[…]

[R]ight now all the momentum is toward greater escalation. And we absolutely cannot do what Trump asks, which is to “just sit back and relax” and trust that “it will all work out well in the end.”

I do not think that world war is inevitable, nor do I think it is probable. But it is more possible now than it has been at any other time since the end of the Cold War, and the American government is led by the worst rulers in the modern history of the United States.

Congress, the only branch of government that possesses the power to intervene, has been prostrate before the president. The threat of a primary loss is all it takes to completely remove the spine from a typical Republican member of Congress.

It’s often said that your average American voter doesn’t really care that much about foreign policy. In general, that’s true — until there’s a catastrophe. When that happens, though, foreign policy isn’t just the main thing; it’s the only thing that truly matters.

Our future may depend in part on American voters deciding to give Congress a spinal transplant. But that requires us to do something that democracies have rarely, if ever, done successfully: see the catastrophe coming and act decisively before a terrible war swallows the world.

But, wait! There’s more!

CNN reports (“Exclusive: US military asks troops for ‘creative and unconventional’ ideas to punish Iran“):

The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

“U.S. Central Command has a long history of thinking and working in innovative ways,” Capt. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesperson for CENTCOM, said in a statement. “Admiral Cooper, in particular, reaches out to members of our great team, regardless of rank, to achieve the highest levels of operational performance possible.”

Let’s hoping they come up with something good.