Businesses and consumers are struggling with a bizarre conflict that is simultaneously happening and not happening.
By Idrees Kahloon, The Atlantic
Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund happily reported that the world had weathered the recently settled Iran war surprisingly well. That same day, President Trump declared the cease-fire “over” and promised, “We’re going to hit them hard again tonight.” The United States resumed bombing Iran. For months, businesses and consumers all around the world have been trying to deal with a bizarre situation in which Trump’s war is both happening and not happening at once.
In quantum mechanics, alternate states of the world can be said to exist together in superposition—Schrödinger’s famous cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Contemporary geopolitics has a similar weirdness. The Strait of Hormuz has been declared simultaneously open and closed. Cease-fires coexist with intermittent bombings. America has decisively won the war, the Trump administration has insisted many times; all the while, it has been negotiating a diplomatic settlement that Iran both does and does not seem to want.
