Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, says American forces have crippled Iran's military and nuclear capabilities. The Pentagon is now sending a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East. Both facts are in this week's coverage, and only one of them involves hulls.

About 9,000 troops are moving with the carrier, according to India TV's account of the deployment. Nobody reinforces a finished war with 9,000 people.

Donald Trump has framed the next step as a choice: strike Iran or strike a deal. A president with a won war does not need to announce a choice. The Guardian ties the deployment to the midterm elections, which makes the carrier a political asset as well as a military one.

The war has no deal. On 1 October China and Russia vetoed a UN mechanism to monitor Iran sanctions. Mike Waltz, the US Ambassador to the UN, answered that Washington would build its own panel. A superpower that must construct its own sanctions monitor is a superpower without a Security Council.

Beijing reads all of this from the other side of the ledger. Taiwan's defence ministry still logs Chinese aircraft, naval vessels and official ships around the island every morning. On 2 October the count was 23 aircraft, seven naval vessels and seven official ships.

The Pentagon has a finite number of carriers and a finite number of interceptors. Every carrier committed to the Gulf is one that Beijing does not have to plan around in the Western Pacific. Beijing does not need to ask which commitment gets cut first when the Gulf and the Strait both want the same ships, because Washington is showing it daily.

If this read is right, Beijing's patient pressure on Taiwan will continue for as long as the Iran war absorbs American hulls.