Monday opened with two officials describing the same negotiation in incompatible terms. The American position is that talks with Iran are being kept deliberately quiet, that the pressure now is economic rather than diplomatic, and that Tehran is broke enough to have trouble paying its own soldiers. The Iranian foreign minister said, a few hours earlier, that there are no talks. Not stalled talks. None. He added that Iran will not sit down while Washington keeps breaking the June agreement.

The current state of European defense infrastructure is the result of a decades-long “peace dividend” that has effectively hollowed out the continent’s military capabilities. Following the Cold War, most European nations systematically dismantled their armed forces, reducing troop numbers, decommissioning heavy armor, and allowing domestic ammunition production to atrophy. Despite the clear warning of 2014, the response from European capitals was largely performative, characterized by a continued refusal to meet basic NATO spending targets or modernize aging stockpiles.