New Delhi, June 10 -- On the 103rd day of a war that was supposed to have ended with a ceasefire, Iran launched solid-fuel ballistic missiles at a United States airbase in Jordan, struck the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and activated air defences across Kuwait - and a retired American general looked at all of it and called it a hopeful sign.

tit for tat, strike for strike, each response carefully scoped so as not to be the one that ends the diplomacy entirely.

The trigger was the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Washington carried out retaliatory strikes on Iranian radar and missile defence sites near Qeshm Island, Sirik, Bandar Abbas, and Jask - all ports or islands clustered around the world's most ...