IN SEARCH OF AN OFF RAMP: Facing another week of rising gas prices and a falling stock market, President Donald Trump made a surprising announcement Monday morning as there were only hours left before the deadline for his threat to “obliterate Iran’s various POWER PLANTS,” if Iran didn’t “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran — having called Trump’s bluff and raised the stakes by threatening to hit energy and desalination plants in the region in retaliation — didn’t blink, and Trump needed a way to back off his threat to attack civilian energy infrastructure, which would have been a war crime and risked widening the war even more.