The strait stays shut, and the war’s bill is now being paid in Riyadh, Erbil and Cairo

Rubio spoke to reporters on Sunday on his way to the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Paris. “Right now, it hasn’t been very productive because the Iranian demands are simply not just unacceptable, but in some cases, outrageous and ridiculous, and really not realistic,” he said, adding: “You have a number of countries that continue to engage them with different ideas, but I wouldn’t say we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.” The White House confirmed that President Trump will host Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Washington on Monday — the single scheduled event in the file. Trump has said renewed attacks are “highly unlikely” if talks progress; CNN’s own account of his interview conditions that on progress alone, while Fox News reported the condition as a nuclear deal plus the reopening of Hormuz. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said it is “time for the White House” to choose, and has previously claimed Iran could reopen the strait within two days on terms. The competing versions of the Qatari proposal — two days, seven days, two stages — have not been reconciled by any outlet.

While the talks produced nothing, the costs landed elsewhere. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy confirmed that a building in Riyadh owned by Aramco was damaged by falling shrapnel; Col. Turki al-Maliki said air defences intercepted three ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and one drone, and civil defence issued alerts as far as Dhahran. In Iraq, the KRG’s natural resources and electricity authorities said in a joint statement that “at 11pm, the Khor Mor gas field came under a terrorist attack”. Omid Ahmed of the KRG electricity ministry put 2,500 to 2,800 megawatts off the grid; Al Jazeera reported more than 70 per cent of the Kurdistan Region without power, with no claim of responsibility and the direction of origin undisclosed. Three days earlier Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had told Trump that Iraqi soil would not be used to attack neighbours. In Cairo, a presidential statement issued late Saturday directed the National Authority for Crisis and Emergency Management to study building state strategic reserves — with no goods, quantities, budget or deadline named.

Washington’s answer to the leakage is institutional rather than kinetic. On 7 November CENTCOM announced that Adm. Brad Cooper had directed the formation of Task Force Iron Gate, an internal staff of roughly 20 civilian and military personnel based in Tampa, Florida, to coordinate with US agencies against weapons, dual-use technology and sanctioned revenue crossing Iran’s land borders and the Caspian. “The establishment of Task Force Iron Gate reinforces the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea,” Cooper said. CENTCOM did not say whether military force would be used; CBS noted the omission, while several outlets described the cell as a blockade of Iran’s land routes. IRGC spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebbi told the IRGC-affiliated Fars agency, in remarks carried by Reuters, that “the Iron Gate plan is merely wordplay”. At sea the picture stayed unverified: Iran’s navy said one tanker struck a mine east of Hormuz on Sunday, the IRGC said three caught fire, and Reuters said it could not immediately confirm the report.

Assessment: The pattern to hold onto is that the measurable damage this weekend was done to non-belligerents, and none of it has an agreed author. No one has claimed Khor Mor. No one has named the mined tanker, its flag or its crew. The Houthi strike on Riyadh is the only attack of the three with a claimant, and the Saudi energy ministry’s confirmation of the Aramco damage is unusually clean sourcing for this file precisely because a government chose to make it. Distrust three things in tomorrow’s copy. First, the word blockade applied to a twenty-person staff cell in Florida: CENTCOM’s own statement describes coordination, not interdiction, and the coverage has outrun the document. Second, the Hormuz condition attributed to Trump — it appears in Fox’s headline and not in CNN’s, and until the transcript settles it one outlet has invented a demand. Third, any day-count of the closure: trackers disagree by two days on the start date. Qatar’s channel is real, but mediation has so far produced proposals, not a reopening.