The US-Iran war came back from its month-long break this weekend, and here is the one-sentence version nobody actually disputes — not even the Pentagon: American forces struck first, hitting two rocket launchers on Larak Island that CENTCOM says were about to seed the Strait of Hormuz with sea mines, and Iran answered with missiles at US bases in Jordan and, it claims, the UAE. Hold on to that word order. Watch what five newsrooms did to it. * Al Jazeera: “Iran attacks Jordan, UAE after US bombs Larak Island.” Chronology intact, causality in the headline, and the US gets the bluntest verb on the shelf — “bombs.” You can quibble with the vibe from Qatar's network; you cannot quibble with the sequence. Sometimes the outlet with the axe to grind is the one that keeps the clock honest. * CNN: “US and Iran trade attacks.” Trade — like cards, like stocks, a transaction between two consenting parties in which nobody in particular went first. The BBC ran the same verb — “US and Iran trade strikes after first known US attack in weeks” — though at least the BBC smuggled the chronology into its own second clause: first known US attack. “Trade” is how you write “both sides did a thing” without having to type which thing came first. * NPR went full meteorology: “Attacks flare between the U.S. and Iran after a monthlong pause.” Nobody attacks anybody in that sentence — attacks simply flare, on their own, like weather. And then NPR's very first paragraph says it plainly: the US military struck, Iran retaliated. This is becoming the NPR signature we keep filing pieces about — two days ago it was the warehouse that vanished from a headline about the year's deadliest strike. The reporting floor at NPR is solid. It's the sign over the door that keeps flinching. * And then there's Fox. Monday's banner: “Trump teases retaliation on Kharg Island after Iran strikes US bases in Jordan.” Read it twice. In Fox's timeline the story now begins with Iran striking — the American attack that opened this round has fallen out of the headline entirely. The next US strike is a “tease,” a word for movie trailers. And “retaliation” has changed hands overnight: Fox's own Sunday headline read “US strikes Iranian missile launchers as Tehran retaliates.” Sunday, retaliating was Tehran's job. Monday, it's Trump's. Retaliation, at Fox, is simply whoever's turn it is. * The stakes under the verbs, all of it sitting in every one of these outlets' own body copy: the IRGC says the Larak strike killed two people and wounded two more. Jordan says it intercepted eight missiles. The UAE says the base Iran claims to have hit was never hit, though it did shoot down a drone. Oil jumped almost 3%. And days after Trump declared the strait cleared of mines, Iran says a supertanker found two of them the hard way. Five newsrooms, one set of facts, total agreement below the fold. * We've spent six months grading this war's grammar — the outlets that named it a different war, the four verbs one Iranian statement got in four newsrooms. The war took a month off. The grammar didn't. Now that the shooting is back, here's your reading tip: check who your headline lets fire first, then check paragraph one to see if the outlet itself agrees.