Can we afford Iran?

A Patriot missile is launched as part of the Patriot Air Defense System at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. | Corbis via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day.

Subscribe here .

President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again war with Iran is officially on again. (So recursive is this never-ending conflict, in fact, that I had to search my inbox to confirm I hadn’t already written that sentence!) On Sunday, the US attacked rocket launchers Sunday on Iran’s Larak Island, claiming the strikes were necessary to prevent Iran from laying mines that could once again disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, meanwhile, responded by firing a volley of ballistic missiles at US sites in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, where they were reportedly intercepted.

The latest skirmish comes after a month of relative peace and quiet, and six months after the war began.

You’ll recall that Trump initially said it would last four to five weeks at the very longest.

But in the grand scheme of Trump’s Iran fictions, that optimistic timeline isn’t even the most flagrant.

On Sunday night, the president also posted a video that purportedly showed Kharg Island, a central hub of Iran’s oil industry, “being blown to smithereens!!!” The video was, in fact, AI-generated .

Go a little deeper View Link The persistence of the war in Iran isn’t merely exhausting for those of us following along at home.

As a group of high-ranking military commanders recently warned the Pentagon, the drawn-out conflict could also make America less safe by limiting the military’s ability to respond to threats in other parts of the world.

That unusual warning — first reported over the weekend by the Washington Post — suggested that the war in Iran is tying up ships and surveillance planes that the US needs elsewhere.

Several top military leaders explicitly warned that the war had forced them to give up resources they needed to protect the US itself.

That’s not the only risk of the ongoing conflict, either.

Longer deployments have also eroded troop morale and disrupted ship maintenance .