Seven months into a war that was supposed to last a few weeks, Tehran is again boasting that it has pitted the United States Navy to its own embarrassment in the open ocean. The week's iteration of the tale, which Iranian media said resulted in the destruction of two American destroyers and the forced retreat of some 20 ships near the Strait of Hormuz, is far from fresh. It was Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' spin on retaliation for a strike by the US on an oil tanker off Iran's Jask port, accompanied by the familiar rhetoric of a "large-scale and precise combined operation" that includes ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and explosive drones. In less than a day CENTCOM responded, claiming that a U.S. carrier and a guided-missile destroyer had avoided the strike entirely and that no American personnel were lost, but that U.S. forces had attacked three Iranian oil tankers.

This is not “theatrical” theatre. Since the conflict began in March, there have been at least six times when Iranian media outlets have claimed a destroyer had been hit, a fleet had fled or American command structures were damaged, only for the Pentagon to say that any of those claims were false. Independent fact checks dating back as far as April have found none of the claims to be true, rather they were deemed to be deterrence signalling. The pattern is more important than any given claim. If one nation is at war and it's the only source of the casualties' numbers, the only video footage of the damage and the sole accurate damage assessment, then the rest of the world is left to determine whose propaganda machine to trust and the ones who are not at war are stuck with the same situation.

What is not in dispute is the economic cost. The price of Brent crude has been hovering in the mid nineties ever since Iran first shut the strait in March, when prices rose above one hundred dollars a barrel, and when they hit a high of near one hundred and eleven dollars in April during a previous escalation. Vessels carrying a fifth of the world's seaborne oil traffic normally pass through Hormuz, but have reduced their activity to about one-third, or risk being caught on the Iranian blacklist of non-compliant vessels that are subject to fines, seizure or detention. Every Indian family filling up their fuel tank, every shipping company calculating their premiums, every economy in the Gulf from Japan to Germany is paying a tax on a war they have no control over. Those are the actual headlines beneath the missile claims: A battle for narratives is being waged on the water, though the invoice is being mail to the worldwide economy.

Beijing and Islamabad have been battling a more subtle divide as the Gulf wares on. For a decade the two capitals have had a "higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the ocean" relationship, and China has pledged more than sixty billion dollars to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But the resolve is now in noticeable wavering. The Chinese government has been reluctant to send officials to Islamabad due to a series of attacks on Chinese nationals, such as the murder of two engineers near the airport of Karachi which has never been forgotten and a bombing near the Chinese consulate.

Beijing has publicly slammed Pakistan's security establishment, postponed visits by their leaders, and called for Islamabad to pay for a separate security team to protect Chinese workers, which just raises questions about sovereignty, but Beijing has not yet done the same. As all other foreign investors had left Pakistan, even China's partial withdrawal would leave Islamabad with alarmingly few options and clearly reveal that the "all weather friendship" was always an empty slogan when the cost of security began to be a drag on the returns on investment. It is more important than any headline for a region whose gaze is fixed on China's western border and its maritime aspirations in the Arabian Sea to have a Beijing that is growing impatient with its most strategically placed ally.

The third fire is a domestic fire, but it will not be confined to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in a close race for re-election, has been in the news over the last two weeks, trying to rewrite the record of Oct. 7, when Hamas crossed the border without the Israeli army waking him up. His own office had already determined more than a year ago that his intelligence officer got a memo about unusual Hamas activity three hours before the attack, but never passed it up the chain, which was an explanation the office gave for the lack.

However, the words of former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot now directly contradict the PM's version, as he states that the warning arrived at Netanyahu's inner circle well before the first rocket landed. A published timeline by the Israeli prime minister's office, which was to be a rosy one, actually revealed a three and a half hour delay between alert and soothing response. None of that anticipates the scope of what was to come, but it does indicate that the official account has changed at least three times over the past two years, that is, in the direction that the official account needs to go.

When the 3 threads are strung together, one pattern emerges. So in Hormuz, in Islamabad, and in Jerusalem, the institutions that are the official version of the events are the ones that are most likely to lose an honest one. Iran must have a positive story to tell themselves for lifting the blockade to be worth their economic hardship.

China must carefully construct their optics of walking away from a standout investment while hiding the fact that the Belt and Road model is flawed in a security aspect that money cannot solve. And Netanyahu must be able to produce an October 7 that passes the elections. All of that doesn't make all of the claims false, but it should make all of the claims provisional until they come into contact with someone who doesn't stand to benefit from the story.