Cyberzenhub.com – The United States has effectively abandoned the proportional-retaliation framework it announced at the outset of its confrontation with Iran over commercial shipping. What began as a blunt promise to answer every Iranian missile or drone with a heavier American blow has, over the course of roughly two weeks, dissolved into silence. Ships continue to take hits in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb corridor, yet no new American strike has been publicly announced since late July, and the president himself has begun describing the incidents as little more than irritations.

The pivot point came on July 7, when President Donald Trump declared the June memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran “over” and vowed that any future Iranian attack on a merchant vessel would trigger what he framed as overwhelming American force. Speaking to reporters that day, he laid out the arithmetic of his approach:…