On August 25, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. Navy had successfully cleared or neutralized all Iranian mines within the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz. With shipping lanes now open, there's an expectation that fuel prices may begin to stabilize, potentially leading Washington to breathe a sigh of relief. However, this perspective would be misguided. It required the world's most formidable naval force six months to rectify the damage inflicted by Tehran in the strait. The 60-day negotiation period yielded no results, with Iran's foreign ministry declaring the deadline "essentially has no relevance," indicating that the regime, having just lost this particular engagement, is already preparing for the next.
This cycle of waiting and maneuvering is intimately familiar to my family. We experienced life under its shadow before our departure from Iran, a Jewish family who witnessed the revolution transform our homeland into a place where our safety and existence were no longer assured.
Iran's Enduring Strategy: Outlasting the Adversary
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and the other leaders of the regime are not aiming to defeat the American military directly; instead, their objective is to outlast the American taxpayer. The regime's very survival hinges on this strategy.
Despite "Operation Midnight Hammer" and the "12-Day War" demonstrating the swift capabilities of American power just a year prior, a protracted conflict, the American public's deepest fear, is nonetheless unfolding. While the Strait of Hormuz is now accessible, the economic strain of the preceding six months has impacted households nationwide. With midterm elections approaching, discussions in Washington are centered on the speed and method of prosecuting this ongoing confrontation.
The longer this conflict persists, the more advantageous it becomes for the Iranian regime. The critical question is whether the United States will fight the war designed by Tehran or the one it is equipped to win. Since 1979, the dictatorship has consistently employed the same tactic, which U.S. officials have long characterized as "deception, defiance and delay." This involves gaining time, depleting the adversary's resources, and surviving to rebuild. The financial dynamics of this confrontation are structured to support this play. Tehran can deploy a Shahed suicide drone for approximately $20,000, while America counters with Patriot interceptors, each costing around $4 million. Iran maintains the capacity to produce an estimated 10,000 drones monthly, has begun reconstructing its missile facilities, and is relocating valuable assets to underground locations.
A Regime Fueled by Alliances and Atrocities
Every cessation of hostilities or temporary halt serves as an opportunity for Iran to rearm. Tehran is not operating in isolation. The regime has forged a 20-year strategic partnership with Russia, receives over a thousand tons of missile-making chemicals from China, and collaborates on missile technology with North Korea.
Each of these agreements reduces the cost for the ayatollah to continue launching attacks, meaning that America's most significant geopolitical rivals are effectively subsidizing the missiles pointed at us. The remaining financial burden falls upon Iran's neighbors, as the regime targets airports, shipping lanes, and commercial areas across Gulf states, from Dubai to Doha, aiming to spread economic hardship and pressure for American concessions.
Beyond external aggressions, a U.N. fact-finding mission has held Iran accountable for the systematic sexual violence and brutalization of women. Iranian law imposes the death penalty for homosexuality, and the regime systematically persecutes ethnic and religious minorities. My family was among those minorities. My mother made the difficult decision to remove my brother and me from Iran because being Jewish had become perilous, and she subsequently rebuilt our lives in America from scratch.
In January, following a nationwide uprising, the regime reportedly killed more than 30,000 people, predominantly students and young individuals, within a mere two-day period. Since then, nearly a thousand executions have been carried out. These are my people, both Jewish and Muslim. As a mother of four daughters, I often contemplate the mothers in Tehran raising girls under a government that views their bodies as state property. Every day this regime endures, more individuals perish while awaiting global intervention.
The violence perpetrated by the regime has never been confined to its own citizens. Iran's proxies were responsible for the deaths of 241 U.S. service members in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing and at least 603 more in Iraq, according to Pentagon figures. The regime has financially supported anti-Israel protestors within the United States, meddled in American elections, and devised plots to assassinate U.S. officials, including the president. I have witnessed this campaign firsthand.
My daughter was a student at Columbia University when protest encampments occupied the campus, and she later testified before Congress about the challenges faced by Jewish students. The regime's influence within American institutions is not an abstract concept for my family. For Tehran, a delay is not merely a pause; it is an opportunity to inflict more harm and undermine America from within.
The Cost of Inaction and Paths Forward
Some voices in Washington advocate for patience, pointing out that the current blockade is having an impact and that U.S. intelligence estimates the regime can withstand approximately 90 to 120 more days. However, both observations can be simultaneously true: the blockade is indeed harming the regime, yet the regime remains unconcerned by this harm.
The ayatollah will prioritize starving his own population, extorting neighboring countries, and forging covert agreements with Moscow and Beijing before he yields. Meanwhile, each passing day adds another costly entry to America's balance sheet. A war of attrition is precisely the kind of conflict this regime is designed to win, having deliberately constructed it that way.
This leaves three possible courses of action: a prolonged war, which Tehran will win on economic terms; an accommodation, which would leave the regime with its missiles, nuclear aspirations, and proxies, merely buying a temporary pause that they would use to prepare for the next confrontation; or a decisive conclusion to the war on America's terms.
Merely weakening the regime without ultimately ending its capacity for aggression only postpones the inevitable. The United States must dismantle the regime’s military-industrial capabilities, cripple the energy infrastructure that funds the Revolutionary Guard, and break its power to suppress the Iranian people who continue to rise against it. My family escaped the oppressors who seized my country almost five decades ago, and I have spent every subsequent year observing the world attempt to manage, contain, and negotiate with them. The Iranian people are not our adversaries; they are the regime’s primary captives. America demonstrated the capabilities of the most powerful military in human history during "Operation Midnight Hammer," and it is our responsibility to complete that task.
