Marco Rubio has made the Pakistan-transmitted Hormuz offer smaller. AP reports that Iran's proposal would ease the strait chokehold if the United States ended the war and blockade, while postponing nuclear negotiations. [1] Rubio appeared to rule out a deal that excludes the nuclear program. [1]

That keeps alive Monday's paper position that the relay mattered but was not yet a settlement. ABC's live file sharpens the point, quoting Rubio's argument that the nuclear question is the reason Washington entered the war and that the United States will not normalize Iranian toll control over the strait. [2]

The offer therefore has two problems. One is ownership: no public government has made the relay a channel. The other is content: the one file Iran wants to postpone is the file Washington says cannot be postponed.

X wants an off-ramp. Mainstream coverage names the diplomatic proposal. The paper's narrower claim is that sequencing is substance. A deal that opens Hormuz while delaying the nuclear question may lower price pressure. It may also fail the stated reason for the war.

That does not make the offer meaningless. It makes it diagnostic. If Washington rejects sequencing, the blockade continues to price the gap between economic relief and nuclear surrender. If Tehran revises the offer, Pakistan may become more than a relay.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington