A spokesman for Abbas Araghchi’s foreign ministry said Monday that Iran wasn’t especially inclined to show up for a second round of peace talks with JD Vance and Steve Witkoff in Pakistan this week.

Iran, the spokesman said, has “no plans” to attend, but no decision’s been made. America, Esmail Baghaei explained, “has in no way demonstrated seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic process.”

Over the weekend, an Iranian cargo ship, the Touska, decided to test the waters, figuratively and literally, on the US Naval blockade of Iran’s ports. It didn’t go well. For the Touska, I mean.

After repeated warnings, a US destroyer shot out the engine room, disabling the ship. Then, helicopters carrying Marines swarmed the Touska and captured it.

The blockade’s both a source of leverage for the US and a potential stumbling block to a deal. Donald Trump’s brushed aside, or completely ignored, Iranian demands that the US lift the blockade which Tehran says constitutes a violation of the two-week ceasefire which ostensibly expires tomorrow.

Iran’s fully aware the US naval exercise is just a “taste of your own medicine” sort of operation. The IRGC has, during tense moments over the years, harassed, fired on, boarded and commandeered ships in or around the Strait. And they shut it altogether last month by threatening unspecified harm to vessels transiting the waterway without explicit coordination with the Guards. Prior to the Touska incident, Iran complied with the blockade rather than risk a confrontation.

Contrary to the way it reads in mainstream media and blog headlines, I don’t think the Iranians were surprised or even necessarily upset about the weekend incident. Don’t get me wrong: It’s an escalation on Trump’s part, but it’s not as if the Touska went rogue. Iran wanted to see if the US would enforce the blockade, and now they have their answer. In theory anyway, they too could use the blockade as leverage: “Drop it, or we aren’t coming to Pakistan.”

But it’s important to consider the interpersonal dynamics. Asim Munir has gone out of his way, again, to prepare Islamabad for high-stakes peace talks. The Serena Hotel went through another arduous security clearance process, parts of the city are cordoned off and so on. Munir was in Tehran just last week meeting with Bagher Ghalibaf and, importantly, Ali Abdollahi.

Abdollahi runs the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, the operational manifestation of the Armed Forces General Staff, which is responsible for making sure Iran’s “regular” army, what’s left of it, is on the same page with the IRGC. Khatam-al Anbiya is also the outfit responsible for the KCNA-style propaganda videos I’ve lampooned in these pages recently.

I don’t think Ghalibaf, Abdollahi and IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi want to embarrass Munir, the quasi-military dictator of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbor who happens to have a signed mutual defense agreement with Mohammed bin Salman. And I doubt Munir’s the type of guy who sets himself up to be embarrassed.

To me anyway, the physical preparations in Islamabad suggest the Iranians are going to send somebody to meet Vance this week, and I don’t think Trump would send him over there if he didn’t have it on good authority (quite possibly via assurances from Munir) that Iran’s planning to attend.

Naturally (unavoidably) there’s a lot of speculation in everything I’ve just said. I’d encourage readers to note that the same’s true of sundry “war monitor” websites, think tanks and glorified consultancies run by former US diplomats.

Nobody knows what’s actually being said in Tehran, and if you notice, the same war monitors, think tanks and consultancies rely almost exclusively on reporting from the very same media outlets which cite them as experts. Where they don’t cite mainstream media, they cite Wikipedia. (Trade on that? No thanks.)

Trump mocked the IRGC on Sunday. “Iran announced they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” he said, on the way to reminding Iran that they’re losing tens of millions of dollars for every day the blockade’s in place. The IRGC, he said, “always want[s] to be ‘the tough guy!'”

Of course, this charade’s costing everyone money, and a lot of grief besides. Behind the posturing and propaganda is sorrow, misery, loss and, in energy markets, a looming physical shortfall. Trump’s also playing with fire (again) by putting a key pillar of dollar dominance in harm’s way.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the UAE asked Scott Bessent and Fed officials for a currency swap line during meetings in D.C. last week. Although the Emirates have “so far avoided the worst economic effects of the conflict,” they might require assistance all the same.

Emirati officials, the Journal said, told their US counterparts “that if the UAE runs short of dollars, it may be forced to use Chinese yuan or other countries’ currencies for oil sales and other transactions.”

Meanwhile, the novelty of Ghalibaf’s market-related tweets is wearing off. He’s clearly using AI — or, according to the rumor mill, a US-based flunkie — to write some of his social media messages.

“Vibe-trading digital oil is like vibe-hedging in Treasurys,” he allegedly wrote Monday. “Both share one house of cards that works on paper” but the difference is that “oil at least has Dated Brent. Treasurys? Vibes all the way down.” He included the Bloomie ticker for Dated Brent.

Spoiler alert: Ghalibaf didn’t write that. A trader, or an AI, wrote it for him. And because Ghalibaf isn’t fluent enough in market colloquialisms to prompt an AI for that take, let alone in English, it’s safe to say ol’ Bagher’s paying somebody to produce his market-related propaganda.