Officials meet at Camp David to find a path forward; Tehran's leads out of the nonproliferation treaty

…(cont) August 26th. The administration opens a new economic operation against Iran and says it is targeting the Iranian government and coming to the aid of the Iranian people. The analysis that same week, from the National Iranian American Council, says the thing is aimed squarely at ordinary Iranians, and that ordinary Iranians will bear the brunt. Two sentences about one policy, and they're not the same sentence.

August 31st. The United States and Iran trade strikes over the weekend, and the president says — I'm reading it off the page — "We're going to hit them hard." And in print that stretch, the war is being measured against the midterm elections, with the promise on the record that it's over right after the election, if not sooner. Right after the election, if not sooner. There's a hinge on it, but it's a date.

September 9th. A senior Iranian health official says the United States is deliberately targeting medical infrastructure, and reports shortages of roughly 800 medicines in a country of about 90 million people. I wrote 800 down twice because I assumed I'd copied it wrong.

September 23rd. A bipartisan group of senators writes the Secretary of State about Reza Valizadeh, 49, an American journalist jailed in Iran. The letter goes out one day before American officials talk indirectly with an Iranian delegation in New York. Both parties signed. One day.

September 28th. The president rejects Iran's latest proposal and says he expects more talks. And the promise, which was right after the election, if not sooner, is now that it ends very quickly.

Here's where I'm slow, and I apologize, because this is about my car and nobody asked. It needs a fan belt. The man at the garage gave me a ready-by date, and then he gave me another one, and I took them both, because what am I, a mechanic? What made me start writing the dates down was the third visit. I came by and there were three fellas standing around the open hood, and they weren't working on it. They were discussing how to proceed. I stood there with the keys in my hand trying to figure out what the first two dates had been based on.

Because Friday, the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Defense Secretary met at Camp David to discuss a path forward on this war. The same day, the report out of Tehran: the war has empowered the extremists there, and threats to withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty are growing.

Oh — excuse me, one more and then I'm out of your hair. The item says Friday's meeting was to find a path forward. Fine. That's a sensible thing to do on a Friday. I'm just trying to locate the previous one in my notes. I've got the economic operation, the strikes, the 800 medicines, the jailed journalist, the rejected proposal, and the two dates. I'm flipping back through August, through September. So on the day it was going to be over right after the election, if not sooner — what was the path forward?