Friday, July 10. Everyone is watching the missiles this week. The real story is moving underneath them, and it is the same story.

For years, Iraq's central bank sold dollars at the official rate to anyone who could show paperwork for imported goods. Much of that paperwork was fake - cover for shipments that arrived empty or never came at all. The cheap official dollars flowed straight out through unlicensed exchange houses, onward to Tehran and the militias it funds. One Baghdad bank alone is accused of pulling 6.5 billion dollars out of the auction on fraudulent paper.

That fraud was never just theft. It was a supply line, and Iran stood at the end of it, fed dollars the United States itself had wired into Iraq's account.

This morning it changed. Iraq switched on ASYCUDA, a customs system that checks every invoice against a live database, so the fake paper stops clearing. The central bank also cut the cash dollars a traveler can carry from 3,000 to 2,000 a month, closing the retail leak alongside it.

In the same stretch of days, Washington tore up Iran's oil license, the fighting emptied the Strait of Hormuz, and a US strike hit Kharg Island - the terminal that ships most of Iran's crude. Iraq sealed Iran's dollar door from the inside. Washington slammed its oil door from the outside.

A currency cannot climb while a foreign power is quietly bleeding it. The Iraqi dinar could not price at its real value for 20 years because too much of its money flowed to Iran. This week, for the first time, both hands closed on the wound at once.

Watch the switch. Everyone else is watching the war.