The head of Tehran's interlocution with the Trump administration did so by a single tweet on Monday, which had deflated any remaining hope for a new diplomatic initiative by the United States. Spending five months in the backchannel and on the battlefield with his rhetoric, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told his followers that the personnel who are moving towards the Gulf with warplanes and warships are not the ones who want this war to end. He said that Washington is playing the same game as it did since February: talking quietly in Geneva or Zurich, then reinforcing every base it can strike Iran.

His words were dropped on a day when the area was not in the mood for reassurance. Less than a week later, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had announced a full-scale war with the United States, a rhetoric Tehran had not used even in the most dire weeks of the spring campaign. Missiles were fired at Eilat, but had drifted over the skies of Jordan's Aqaba, so near that Israeli air defenses fired them over another country's land. Kuwait and Bahrain had just been struck by fresh strikes. American forces were just finishing their ninth straight night of bombing raids on the Iranian territory, confirming the death of a third American service member, in addition to the death of two others in Jordan which Pentagon officials have not identified that the U.S. had hit days prior.

What Ghalibaf is proposing is not a new idea, but one that's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Recently, Washington has been moving more warplanes and equipment into the theater that could not have been interpreted as a wind-down, as Israeli officials reportedly briefed their own security cabinet on the “wider war.” That framing doesn't mesh with the diplomatic bluster and urgency emanating from the same week, as mediators are said to be trying to revive the failed MOU from June with an eye toward a ten-day truce, believed to include the participation of Qatari and Pakistani officials who were instrumental in arranging the original accord. It's the second time in five months that such a document has been signed and then pulled apart in less than a few weeks, previously in the controversy over the enforcement of the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and then in the series of strikes and counterstrikes that has now extended to Gulf states that have no direct involvement in the initial fight.

That unraveling cost is now real, and not theoretical, being measurable in the economic cost. Brent crude, which was trading just under $80 a barrel when the June memorandum was signed at Versailles, has rallied towards the mid-80s in recent sessions as there was a resurgence in fighting and prices have climbed close to a third of the way from July's lows. Analysts have seen it before this year, and know how fast the oil jugs can move: In March, Brent briefly topped $100 a barrel and hovered around $150 forecasts in the days before the Strait, which generally handles about one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil, slowed to a trickle. Since the recent strikes shipping along the waterway has been reduced again, and the state oil company of Kuwait has admitted that one of its facilities was damaged by an Iranian strike over the weekend showing that the economic impact is far greater than the two main belligerents.

But Washington has a tougher constraint to work against in just out-escalating its way to a deal, and it may be why Ghalibaf is so confident. Independent estimates of the US arsenal, including one by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have revealed that stockpiles of several high-end munitions, such as Tomahawks, JASSMs, precision strike missiles and key interceptor variants have been cut in half since the beginning of the campaign this year. But the White House has publicly downplayed concerns about depletion, saying the reserves are there, but that hasn't been sitting well with reports that months ago the Joint Chiefs privately raised the same issue with the president. The military that is simultaneously loading the guns on an area and consuming its best ammunition at an unsustainable pace is not necessarily bluffing when it talks about de-escalation it is certainly doing precisely that but at the same time there is no incentive to rush and buy time, which is exactly what Ghalibaf is alleging the military is doing.

This does not mean Tehran has a clean bill of health when it comes to tactical theater. But Iran has played the language of "full-scale war" in the past and its media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard has a way of hyping every new American escalation, such as the warning earlier this week to Houthis to halt Red Sea shipping if Washington attacks Iran's power grid. This moment is unique because the diplomatic façade on both sides is getting thin. The ceasefire, which was signed in mid-June, and which had come with a fourteen-point roadmap including reconstruction aid, sanctions relief and a progressive reopening of the Hormuz port, was broken twice in just five weeks; each time it was broken it was accompanied by reinforcement, not restraint. Ghalibaf's point that physical demeanor is a better indicator than words is one that the regional governments of Amman to Manama seem to be following even as they say it quietly. Whether the outcome of the next series of talks is mediated or not, the region's oil markets, its vulnerable Gulf neighbours and its fatigued militaries are all taking the shooting as a message that they believe most.