The trigger: a missile into the Cyprus-flagged Galaxy on the Omani route, one crew member missing, the ship burning and dead in the water.
Centcom's statement says the strikes come at the commander-in-chief's direction, and this wave is different.
For the first time since June 17, ground-launched ATACMS and HIMARS are reportedly flying out of Kuwait and Bahrain, meaning two Gulf states just visibly signed their names to the campaign.
Targets stretch from Jask to Bushehr's vicinity to Kaman, the deepest strike map yet, with air defenses lighting up near Tehran.
Brandon Weichert read the response speed as the tell: retaliation that fast means the packages were pre-loaded, and an administration primed for something bigger than tit-for-tat.
His deeper point hasn't moved.
Washington keeps betting that economic strangulation collapses the regime, but 47 years of sanctions never buckled a government whose legitimacy was never economic.
Iran can't blink because for Tehran this is existential; Washington won't blink because Trump reads any Iranian control of the strait as defeat.
His World War One line hung over the night: nobody in 1914 called it a world war either.
They called it the Third Balkan Crisis.
@WeTheBrandon
