Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian held the same line for a second day Friday — Iran will negotiate, but not under pressure — while IRGC Navy units fired ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, and drones at the USS Truxtun, Rafael Peralta, and Mason transiting Hormuz Thursday and seized the Barbados-flagged Ocean Koi in the Gulf of Oman Friday. [1][2] Yesterday's paper read Pezeshkian's three-channel phone diplomacy as a script designed to refuse Trump's clock without rejecting Trump's offer; today the script ran into the kinetic exchange the May 7 lead said the floor would have to survive. Pezeshkian's office reiterated that "any negotiation regarding the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz requires the lifting of the naval blockade," language carried verbatim from Wednesday's Macron call. [3] CENTCOM struck Iranian military sites in response, and Trump told reporters he had been told about a deal concept "but was waiting for the exact wording." [1] The floor either holds through live fire or the phrase loses meaning; Friday's tape says it holds.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem