Tehran Signals Peace. Its Armies Did Not Get the Memo.

On the same day Iran’s diplomats sat with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Hezbollah’s secretary-general Naim Qassem dismissed the seventh round of Lebanon-Israel talks — convened in Rome that Tuesday — as a process that had brought Lebanon “nothing except shame, humiliation, disappointment and one concession after another.” The Iraqi militias ignored Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s September 30 disarmament deadline as though it had been issued by a foreign government. Tehran sent one signal. The network that carries its influence sent three others, in three different directions. What looks like a coordination failure is something more durable and more structural.