It’s Tuesday, July 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: America’s abandoning a crucial ally. Arthur Brooks on how the self-help industry can survive AI. Prince Harry’s much-needed life lesson. And much more.

But first: What’s going on with Iran?

The on-again, off-again war against Iran is very much back on. Consider yesterday’s developments alone:

• Trump ordered U.S. forces to “reinstate” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and proposed a 20 percent toll on all cargo that travels through the strait;

• The White House sent a letter to Congress, dated July 10, declaring a resumption in hostilities with Iran beginning July 7;

• The U.S. conducted a third consecutive night of strikes on Iran to “impose a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack shipping in the strait”;

• The UAE said that Iran had struck two of its tankers in the strait;

• Oil futures saw their largest single-day gain since April;

• Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the U.S. might strike the Iranian nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain with “a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” and that the U.S. would hit Iran “very hard” Monday and Tuesday.

Free Press columnist Aaron MacLean saw much of this coming last week, when he argued that the reality of the president’s predicament pointed to him reinstating a naval blockade to take control of the strait. That now appears to be the administration’s strategy. But will it work? And at what cost? To make sense of the flurry of Iran news over the last 24 hours, read Aaron’s latest column.

And for more on the conflict, don’t miss the latest episode of School of War. He talks to Mike Doran about the state of play in the Middle East, just how weak the Iranian military actually is at this point, and whether or not the conflict’s end is in sight.

Watch

America’s Iran Problem Isn’t Going Away, with Mike Doran

Patrick McGee • Tech and Business

Why Apple Declared War on OpenAI

Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, accusing the company of trade secret theft at “every level”—from technical staff to its chief hardware officer. The allegations are explosive, but are they the whole story? Apple-watcher and Free Press tech writer Patrick McGee isn’t so sure. He dives into this clash of the tech titans, and what he thinks it’s really all about. Read story ›

Haviv Rettig Gur • Israel

Ro Khanna’s Dishonest Israel Stunt

Over the weekend, congressman Ro Khanna had a run-in with a handful of armed Israelis that went viral. If you listen to Khanna’s version of events , you would think that this was an illegal detention of an American lawmaker by armed settlers. But that’s not what happened, writes Haviv Rettig Gur. Read Haviv’s latest on the stunt, why the congressman’s story fell apart, and what the incident reveals about the rocky relationship between Israel and the new Democratic Party. Read story ›

Elliott Abrams • International

The U.S. Is Losing Venezuela

In January, Donald Trump liberated Venezuela from Nicolás Maduro. But since then, Washington has hugged the socialist puppet Delcy Rodríguez and undermined and demeaned opposition leader María Corina Machado. It’s a dismaying turn of events, including for Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy for Venezuela during the first Trump administration. Today in The Free Press, Abrams outlines what is becoming nothing less than a betrayal of the Venezuelan people. Read story ›

Arthur Brooks • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks: Could a Machine Write This Column?