Iran re-closed the Strait of Hormuz on April 18. The follow-up Islamabad talks never materialized. Trump extended the ceasefire at the last moment on April 21. This briefing tracks what the proxies do while the patron negotiates. In the Houthi lane, the apparatus spent the week running a coordinated ideological conditioning campaign through every institution it controls, elevating Lebanon as a justification for continued mobilization, absorbing strikes on its own missile infrastructure, and absorbing a series of international events, from the Pope’s rebuke of Trump to an IDF soldier smashing a crucifix in south Lebanon, into its propaganda architecture.
