Will he or won’t he? Donald Trump prides himself on being unpredictable. “I may do it,” he said on Wednesday when asked if he was planning to strike Iran. “I may not do it?.?.?.?Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

In practice, however, Trump is often easy to decode. Judging by his first term and the first 152 days of his second, Trump’s most extreme rhetoric is frequently a precursor to its opposite. Ask Kim Jong Un. In 2017 Trump vowed “fire and fury” on North Korea’s “rocket man”. The next year, he disclosed that Kim had sent him “beautiful letters and?.?.?. we fell in love”. 

No deal came of it. Could Iran be in for a similar metamorphosis? Trump’s signals are mixed. But his declaration on Thursday of a two-week timeout suggests he is inching away from war. In Trump’s world, two weeks is a long time. Yet he can also turn on a dime.