www.thefp.com74%
Platner’s Defiant Departure. A Way Out of the Iran Mess. Plus. . . 3%
By The Free Press21%
7/9/2026, 10:01:20 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Halo Effect, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 14.3% saturation with 106 hits. Analysis detected 836 faulty-reasoning hits from 740 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 14.1% and a BS Rank of 3% (19,970 of 20,443 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.70% of the article peer group.
It’s Thursday, July 9.
This is The Front Page , your daily window into the world of The Free Press —and our take on the world at large.
Today: Eli Lake on Graham Platner’s attempt to make himself a martyr.
Inside the 2028 Republican shadow primary.
The immigration hard-liners suing the Trump administration over deportations.
And much more.
But first: The war with Iran is officially back on.
At the NATO summit in Turkey yesterday, President Donald Trump declared the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran dead.
Iran attacked three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, triggering a wave of U.S. strikes that continued into Wednesday.
Trump reimposed the naval blockade and said he wasn’t sure he wanted a deal at all.
“We can play games,” he told reporters , “but I’m not sure I want to make a deal.
Let’s just finish the job.”
So where do we go from here?
Aaron MacLean argues that the administration’s original sin was failing to anticipate Iran’s most obvious countermove: closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The ceasefire agreed upon three weeks ago was built on self-deception, with the United States claiming that the MOU required Iran to open the strait when its text said nothing of the sort.
Now, with the agreement dead and strikes resuming, Trump faces four choices.
Read Aaron on what those options are, and why only one of them offers a real way out.
Meanwhile, as millions gather in Iranian cities to mourn the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad has been hearing a very different story from people inside the country.
What the Islamic Republic is staging as a display of strength, she argues, is instead a performance.
Read Masih on what’s really happening on the ground.
—The Editors
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100%flagged-word coverageAaron MacLean
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Analysis
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