Where the War Is Still a War

An adviser to Iran’s negotiating team recently said that Tehran should ready itself for years of “neither war, nor peace.” The phrase has become popular among Iranian political analysts trying to make sense of an ostensibly ambiguous situation: The conflict is supposedly over, but Iran’s military keeps striking ships and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, and the United States keeps bombing Iran. The people of Bandar Abbas, a port city of about half a million on Iran’s southern coast, do not find…