The US president was evacuated last night from the Washington Hilton after a shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, from California, charged the checkpoint armed with a shotgun, a handgun and several knives. A Secret Service agent was struck by a bullet in his vest. When asked if the attack was linked to Iran, Trump replied: “I don’t think so, but you never know.”

 And Tehran had already drawn its line. This same week, the heads of Iran’s three branches of power, President Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf and Judiciary Chief Mohseni Ejei, launched a coordinated response calling Trump “despicable” and accusing him of fabricating lies to cover up his military failures in the war against Iran.

 Official outlet Press TV doubled down. Under the headline “Big defeat to big lies,” it said Trump is “peddling fiction” about supposed internal divisions in Iran to mask US military losses, bipartisan opposition to the war and a wave of resignations in Washington.

 Trump responded after the attack in the same tone. He told reporters the attack “will not stop him from winning the war against Iran,” announced the naval blockade will continue and kept negotiations with US envoys in Pakistan canceled, just as Araghchi was leaving Islamabad accusing Washington of not being “serious about diplomacy.”

 The takeaway is unsettling. In less than 24 hours, an attack on the president, a hardline Iranian message saying Trump lies, and a foreign minister leaving Pakistan with no deal. Each new event pushes the region closer to a second phase of the war, and the April 8 ceasefire hangs by a thread.