Donald Trump’s way with words was on display on the morning of April 7 when he posted on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Sarah Yager of Human Rights Watch accused him of planning “a war crime, plain and simple.” Agnès Callamard of Amnesty International saw something worse: “a threat to commit genocide.” Senator Patty Murray of Washington heard “the rantings of a bloodthirsty lunatic.”
Trump’s post, however, was deliberate strategic communication. It placed before the regime in Tehran a stark choice: Surrender your nuclear weapons program or face the destruction of Iran’s electricity and transportation grids—legitimate targets under the laws of war. Before nightfall, Trump had decided not to trigger the apocalypse. Instead, he announced a two-week ceasefire. His forbearance failed to mollify the critics. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez spoke for many on both sides of the Atlantic when he said, “The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.”
The New York Times and other legacy outlets folded Trump’s ceasefire announcement into their preferred, specious storyline about the gyrations of reckless leaders. According to this account, Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the war expecting a swift decapitation strike to topple the regime, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) proved more resilient than expected. Iran continued to launch drones and missiles and used the persistent threat to pressure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Its attacks on civilian targets in the Gulf States raised the costs, forcing Trump to confront risks of escalation that he found intolerable. Trump therefore retreated. To cover his tracks, he declared victory and falsely portrayed Iran as having capitulated.
Critics of Trump’s approach focus almost exclusively on this one aspect of the battlefield, namely the IRGC’s continued missile and drone attacks and its disruption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The assessment by former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger in a conversation with The Economist in March is typical. Younger argued that Iran had “played a weak hand pretty well” through “horizontal escalation,” claiming that Trump had “underestimated the task” and “lost the initiative.” Trump, in this view, had handed Tehran the “whip hand.”
This view misses the larger picture. To be sure, the IRGC retains the capability to inflict damage through asymmetric tactics, but it cannot sustain itself on oxygen and a commitment to jihad alone. Without a viable economic base, even the most hardened regime will crack. Trump has focused on that vulnerability.
Trump did not plan to destroy a civilization. He has not yet won the war. And the Iranian government remains in the hands of wily terrorists, not friendly businessmen.
To support their tale, the president’s critics pointed to the Truth Social post that threatened civilizational erasure. In one line, Trump seemed to say that the IRGC was in total control and would not listen to reason. “I don’t want [the destruction of Iranian civilization] to happen, but it probably will,” he wrote. Then came the pivot: “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.” In one sentence, the regime came across as a band of fanatics prepared to fight to the death; in the next, as a collection of pragmatists ready to strike a deal.
“When he makes claims like this,” Salena Zito wrote in 2016, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” Ten years later, Zito’s insight remains fresh. Trump’s default setting is hyperbole. Many of the claims he makes are not literally true. He did not plan to destroy a civilization. He has not yet won the war. And the Iranian government remains in the hands of wily terrorists, not friendly businessmen.
Still, it is important to step back and look plainly at who is actually in the advantageous position and why. Trump used the threat of overwhelming force to confront the regime with a strategic choice. He then pivoted to a less costly path—sustained economic pressure—while continuing to force leaders in Tehran to choose between their nuclear program and the well-being of their society. As of right now, the U.S. holds virtually all the cards in terms of the military power of Iran, but also in terms of who benefits from the passage of time, given the deteriorating economic conditions Iran is facing.
Even before the war, the Islamic Republic was already reeling; its currency, the rial, had collapsed, and shortages of medicine and basic goods were widespread. By early November, a deepening water crisis had grown so severe that President Masoud Pezeshkian warned, “[I]f the rains do not come, we may have to evacuate Tehran.” In December, economic despair ignited strikes and shop closures that escalated into nationwide protests, with security forces killing many thousands.
The war has transformed Iran’s preexisting economic crisis into a systemic breakdown. Official Iranian estimates put direct and indirect damage at up to $270 billion, though independent assessments suggest the true cost could be several times higher. GDP is projected to contract by around 10 percent this year, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting inflation approaching 69 percent. Iran’s Central Bank has warned that full reconstruction could take up to 12 years.
Precision strikes crippled 85 percent of Iran’s petrochemical export capacity, costing tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. Attacks on the country’s two largest steel plants slashed national steel production by an estimated 70 percent. In addition to being generators of export revenue, these industries are also major employers.
Steel and petrochemical industries are also pillars of the Iranian stock exchange. They function as important vehicles for protecting assets from inflation. Yet since early March 2026, the regime has forcibly shut down the Tehran Stock Exchange entirely. The halt was a desperate measure to prevent an immediate market meltdown, panic selling, and a rush out of the rial into hard assets. By freezing trading, the regime has temporarily hidden the true scale of wartime destruction from the Iranian public.
This week, the head of the Iranian Securities and Exchange Organization announced that he is considering reopening the stock exchange in approximately 10 to 12 days. The reopening will, however, exclude companies damaged by the war—including the steel industry, the second-largest sector on the Iranian stock exchange. This decision has proven controversial inside Iran, with critics warning that it will deepen distrust in the regime’s key financial institutions and accelerate capital flight and inflation.
But if trading in steel and petrochemicals is allowed, the consequences will also be severe. Shares will collapse. That decline will expose losses that have so far remained hidden, placing pressure on banks, households, and politically connected investors at the same time. The result will be visible evidence of the regime’s mismanagement of the economy in pursuit of its jihadi priorities.
The regime has delayed this reckoning by imposing a nationwide internet shutdown that has lasted more than 50 days. The economic cost already runs into the billions. Officials justify the blackout as protection against cyberattacks, but it also limits coordination among protesters and restricts information about the scale of the damage.
Trump’s approach exploits these pressures. It will not deliver a rapid knockout blow, but a systematic strangulation of the Iranian economy. Oil trade and maritime activity will decline. The banking system will collapse. Inflation will increase even further. And unemployment will rise dramatically. The Central Bank of Iran has warned of an additional two million people joining the ranks of the unemployed, an unprecedented figure.
The economic strangulation did not begin now, on the fly. It started with Trump’s return to the White House, and it is what led to the unrest at the beginning of the year. Ultimately, it is the single most important factor that will ultimately determine Iran’s fate.
By maintaining economic strain while leaving open the possibility of negotiation, Trump forces competing factions within the regime to argue over how to respond. Some favor continued confrontation; others seek sanctions relief. The result is paralysis at a moment when coordinated action is most needed. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei early in the conflict eliminated the central figure capable of balancing the regime’s competing institutions. In his absence, internal tensions have intensified.
By sustaining pressure while keeping a diplomatic channel open, Trump forces these divisions into the open. In mid-April, when Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that the Strait of Hormuz was reopening to commercial traffic, an IRGC naval operator contradicted him on an international maritime channel, dismissing him as “some idiot.”
Each new American move sharpens the disagreement between factions that want continued resistance and those that seek accommodation. The regime must make a strategic choice under conditions that grow more difficult with time. The longer Trump delays the escalation, the weaker the Islamic Republic becomes. And even as economic pressure builds, Trump’s option of destroying power plants and bridges remains.
A difficult challenge persists: translating this economic and military leverage into a durable political outcome. That process will not be easy, and Trump’s detractors will point to each difficulty along the way as proof that the president has no plan, as if they possess a simple formula for forcing jihadi terrorists to relinquish a nuclear weapons program.
The task of defeating Iran will test American statecraft. But the central point stands: The whip hand belongs not with the IRGC, but with Donald Trump.