Ted Docks, FBI Boston's special agent in charge, told reporters Friday that law enforcement would run Monday's 130th Boston Marathon in what he called a "heightened threat environment," a phrase he attached explicitly to the war in Iran and the "large public gathering" that a marathon is. [1] He also said the FBI "is not aware of any specific or credible threats directed at this year's race." [2] Both sentences are the statement.

The difference this year is context, not intelligence. Bank of America is the title sponsor — one of the six banks the paper has been tracking on its own Iran balance sheet. [3] The marathon begins in Hopkinton, ends at Copley, and runs through a dozen open miles where drones, which Docks and colleagues named as the new operating concern, cannot be ruled out by barricades.

Mayor Michelle Wu and Massachusetts State Police joined the Friday briefing. The decisions they described — more officers, more cameras, more drone-detection equipment along the course — are the decisions a city makes when the posture changes but the threat picture does not. Boston has done this before. Not only in 2013, which is the reference everyone avoids, but every April since.

The runners will run. Twenty-seven thousand of them. They will cross the finish line under heavier surveillance than last year, in a week the U.S. president called NATO a paper tiger and the Strait of Hormuz reopened for everyone except Iranian flags. The heightened environment is the city's name for a perimeter the country now permanently inhabits.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, Boston