The recent statement by U.S. President Donald Trump about Iran’s financial losses from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is less a policy position and more a late attempt to justify a political, military, and moral failure.

Instead of addressing what the world was actually waiting for — the fate of the theocratic and repressive system in Tehran — Trump retreats into the language of numbers: Iran is losing $500 million a day, soldiers are unpaid, liquidity is drying up. This accounting vocabulary usually appears when decision‑makers are unable to present a real political achievement. It is not the language of a leader waging a war to topple a regime, but the language of a businessman trying to reassure shareholders that the losses are “under control.”

From the first week of the war, large segments of Iranians — inside the country and across the diaspora — were hoping for the moment the regime that has weighed on their lives for more than four decades would finally fall. But it quickly became clear that the war was not designed to bring down Ali Khamenei’s system. It was designed to reshape regional power balances, even if that meant sacrificing Iran as a state and a society.

This is where the sense of betrayal began: the people who dreamed of liberation discovered that the war was being waged above their heads, not for their sake.

As Trump extends the ceasefire........

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