For 13 nights the pattern held. American strikes hit targets inside Iran, and by US news accounts Central Command announced each round as it came.
Overnight into Saturday, the announcements stopped. So, by two separate accounts, did the strikes. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, Resul Serdar, reported no direct attacks on major Iranian cities. Iran's health ministry spokesman, Hossein Kermanpour, put it in five words on social media: "Iran had a peaceful night."
The latest. One night without strikes on Iranian cities. The US naval blockade of Iranian ports, reimposed on 14 July, is still running. Tehran says American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan were hit on Saturday. Talks are live, and stuck.
That is the whole of the good news, and it is worth being careful with, because it is made of an absence. Nothing was announced. Nothing was reported. Those are real facts and they are also the most fragile kind.
The rest of the war carried on.
The blockade has been in force since 14 July. On Friday, Central Command's spokesman, Tim Hawkins, told Al Jazeera that American forces had disabled a tanker which repeatedly tried to run it and ignored warnings. The day before, the US military said it had redirected 12 vessels and disabled one other since the blockade restarted.
Tehran, for its part, said US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan were struck on Saturday. Sirens sounded in Bahrain. Those are Iranian claims, and Washington has not confirmed what landed or what it hit.
Donald Trump spent Friday night sounding like a man keeping two doors open. The massive strikes he had threatened might no longer be necessary, he said. "They are talking to us right now; they'd love to make a deal," he said. "I don't think they're ready to ... but I'm willing to listen." He also said the United States remains locked and loaded.
Underneath the strikes, the argument is about a shipping lane and who gets to direct traffic in it.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States this week of forcing open a new route through the Strait of Hormuz that goes around Iranian authorities. He says that breaks the memorandum of understanding the two sides signed in June, which in Tehran's reading gives Iran the right to set transit routes and mechanisms through the strait. Washington should have consulted, he said, since the two had agreed to keep a direct line open for exactly these disputes.
The United States rejects that reading and has said repeatedly that Iran does not control the strait. The gap between those two sentences is the war's current engine.
Messages are moving. Both governments confirm it. Iranian officials told Al Jazeera that mediators have passed along proposals and that Tehran is reviewing them, though Serdar reported there is not much progress yet, with fundamental differences on the substance and deep mistrust on both sides.
The neighbors are working their own channels. Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, spoke by phone on Saturday with Araghchi and separately with Oman's foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, pressing for an immediate halt to military action and for freedom of navigation through Hormuz and the Red Sea. An Omani delegation had arrived in Tehran the day before to talk about the mechanisms governing passage through the strait.
Whether any of that made Friday night quiet is unknown.
Wolfgang Pusztai, a former Austrian defense attaché, told Al Jazeera that Washington is running diplomacy, the blockade and military force together, toward one objective: opening the strait. He described a deliberate rhythm to it.
"There is some kind of hot and cold approach," he said. "So one night they are bombarded, one night they are not bombarded."
Saturday night will say more than Friday did.