In negotiations between the United States and Iran to end the war that began three months ago, uncertainty, denials and — in Washington’s case — an urgent desire to announce some sort of deal have taken firm hold. A senior White House official speaking on condition of anonymity announced on Thursday a framework agreement that Tehran shortly afterwards denied.

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In the war with Iran, the sense of urgency has shifted sides. In February, the United States and Israel judged it so urgent to start the conflict that they were prepared to launch a massive strike and kill the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, even amid negotiations; three months later it is Donald Trump who is trying to keep alive the talks that would definitively end the conflict, while Tehran remains firm. The U.S. president showed that attitude again on Monday when he ordered Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to halt the airstrikes the latter had announced on Beirut. The aim? To prevent the feared derailment of negotiations with the ayatollahs.

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It was the downing of a U.S. helicopter by an Iranian drone over the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. It could have been any other skirmish: U.S. and Iranian forces had spent days engaged in increasingly serious encounters in the area while talks for a peace agreement dragged on. But that clash last Monday particularly upset President Donald Trump, who had just agreed a ceasefire in Lebanon. The Republican announced on Tuesday that the United States had to return the blow. A sequence of events began that seemed to push the two countries to the brink of resuming large-scale hostilities.

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U.S. President Donald Trump has made good on his warning. U.S. forces deployed near the Persian Gulf struck targets in Iran early Wednesday after that country shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter flying over the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Central Command, which is responsible for those troops in the Middle East. The news website Axios reported that the targets were radar and air defense systems in Iran.

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