Trump's promise to wait until after the midterms reaches Tehran, which doesn't believe it, 13 days out.

…(cont) Sixteen days later, on the 17th, word went out that the president would sit down with Gulf leaders at the UN General Assembly to talk through what the report called "postwar strategy" — while the war itself was still very much on.

Eleven days after that — September 28th — two things happened, same date, and nobody's asked them to agree with each other. First, the president turned down a seven-day ceasefire proposal out of Tehran and said he expected more talks that week, because, his words, Iran "wants to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make." Second, that same day, the oil market put out its own number: Gulf exports back to 72 percent of what they ran before the war, with the administration's own line being that the blockade had Iran "exhausted."

Now it's today, the 21st of October. Thirteen days out from an election that decides who sits in the Congress the president has said can wait on this. Three things came across this morning. I'll give you each one once.

The Gulf number isn't 72 percent anymore. It's past where it stood before any of this started — more than 24 million barrels a day moving through, and that's with what the count calls a record number of Iranian attacks on that same stretch of water.

The talks are still indirect. Still open. Iran's side says Washington wants changes made to that same seven-day proposal the president turned down last month. Nothing's been signed.

And the one on page nine: Iran's top security official — a general, Rezaei — told a reporter this week that Tehran believes the United States and Israel may strike before the vote. Not after it. Before. He said Iran has new targets picked out, in case.

I think about the lane at the toll plaza, the one that waves you through and mails the bill later. You trust the sign — pay later, it says — so you drive on through without reaching for cash. But the fellow in the booth next to that lane isn't reading your sign. He's watching the camera that already clocked your plate the second you crossed under it, and if you asked him when the charge posts, he'd tell you it already did. The bill arriving later doesn't mean the account didn't move the moment you went through.

So here's what I can't get past, and maybe you can square it for me, because you're the ones running the smart operation. One piece of paper says the strike waits for the vote. One man, whose whole job is reading exactly this kind of thing for his government, says the vote might not get there first.

Excuse me — before anyone files this under good news about the oil market — which of those two dates is the thirteen days actually counting down to?