As West Asia edged closer to a wider conflagration, President Trump cut short his weekend retreat and returned to the White House, while Iran delivered formal conditions for negotiations and Houthi forces struck toward Riyadh. The convergence of these moves — a missile launched, terms conveyed through a Qatari intermediary, and a president suddenly back at his desk — suggests that the region has entered one of those compressed, consequential moments when the distance between diplomacy and war grows very short. History will record whether this weekend marked the beginning of a negotiated off-ra