The ultimatum shifts – Monday midnight, then five days more – as if time itself were negotiable, like a treaty signed in sand. What is this but spectacle dressed as strategy? A ruler, unmoored from counsel, commands the impossible – obliterate – as though power were a hammer and the world a nail. But power is not hammer and nail. Power is reason, restraint, the long habit of justice.

I ask: what part of this is within my control? Not Iran’s reactors. Not the President’s impulse. Not the shifting deadline – a theatrical device, not a measure of resolve. What is mine is this: to speak clearly, act justly, and refuse to be moved by fear masquerading as strength.

Consider the river – it does not rage against the rock. It flows around it, over it, through it. So too must the statesman flow: not with the current of panic, nor against it with blind force, but with purpose, with measure, with memory of what endures.

In a hundred years, will anyone recall the exact hour of the deadline? No. But they will remember whether leaders chose wisdom or spectacle, whether they preserved life or merely performed vengeance. The duty is not to prevent all conflict – that is beyond our grasp – but to ensure that when action is taken, it is measured, necessary, and grounded in the common good.

I return to the first principle: distinguish what is yours from what is not. The ultimatum? Not yours. The response? Yours. The clarity of speech? Yours. The integrity of counsel? Yours.

Let the world shift its deadlines. Stand firm in yours – not the deadline of force, but the deadline of conscience.