TRUMP OPENS HORMUZ UNDER FIRE WITH \u2018PROJECT FREEDOM\u2019 AS IRAN WARNS OF ATTACKS<\/a><\/p>\n A year after Operation Midnight Hammer and the 12-Day War showed the world what American power can do in a matter of days, the American public\u2019s worst fear is materializing anyway: a drawn-out conflict. The strait may be reopening, but the squeeze of the past six months reached pocketbooks nationwide, midterm elections are approaching and Washington is debating how, and how fast, to prosecute this war.<\/p>\n Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz on August 10, 2026, off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. (Ali Saeedi\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n The longer this war runs, the more the Iranian regime gains. The only question that matters is whether America fights the war Tehran designed or the war America can win. Since 1979, the dictatorship has run the same play, which U.S. officials have long described<\/a> as “deception, defiance and delay.” Buy time, bleed the adversary, survive to rebuild. The arithmetic of this war was built for that play. Tehran fields a Shahed suicide drone for about $20,000; America answers with Patriot interceptors at roughly $4 million each. Iran maintains the capacity to manufacture an estimated 10,000 drones a month, has begun rebuilding its missile facilities, and is moving valuable assets underground.<\/p>\n Every truce and every pause becomes a rearmament window for Iran. Tehran is not waiting alone. The regime signed a 20-year strategic partnership with Russia, is receiving more than a thousand tons of missile-making chemicals from China, and collaborates on missile technology with North Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n Each arrangement lowers what it costs the ayatollah to keep firing, which means our gravest geopolitical rivals are helping underwrite the missiles aimed at us. The rest of the bill lands on Iran\u2019s neighbors, as the regime strikes airports, shipping and commercial districts across the Gulf states, from Dubai to Doha, to spread the pain and build pressure for American concessions.<\/p>\n IRAN TAPS FINANCIAL LIFELINE, RUSSIAN ARMS AS TRUMP ESCALATES ‘CRUSHING’ ECONOMIC WARFARE<\/a><\/p>\n A U.N. fact-finding mission found Iran responsible for the systematic rape and brutalization of women. Iran\u2019s laws make homosexuality punishable by death, and the regime persecutes ethnic and religious minorities as policy. My family was one of those minorities. My mother pulled my brother and me out of Iran because being Jewish there had become dangerous, and she rebuilt our lives in America from nothing.<\/p>\n In January, after a nationwide uprising, the regime reportedly murdered more than 30,000 people, most of them students and young people, in just two days. It has carried out nearly a thousand executions<\/a> since. Those are my people, Jewish and Muslim alike. I am now a mother of four daughters, and I think about the mothers in Tehran raising girls under a regime that treats their bodies as state property. Every day this regime survives, more of them die waiting for the world to act.<\/p>\n IRAN\u2019S KILLER DRONES INCREASE SLAUGHTER IN SUDAN AMID WORLD\u2019S FORGOTTEN WAR<\/a><\/p>\n The violence has never been limited to its own captive citizens. Iran\u2019s proxies killed 241 U.S. service members in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing<\/a> and at least 603 more in Iraq, by the Pentagon\u2019s own count. The regime has funded anti-Israel protesters inside America, interfered in our elections, and plotted to assassinate American officials, including the president. I have seen that campaign up close.<\/p>\n My daughter was a student at Columbia when the encampments took over campus, and she testified before Congress about what Jewish students were facing. The regime’s reach into American institutions is not abstract to my family. For Tehran, delay is not a pause. It is an opportunity to extract more blood and damage America from within.<\/p>\n Some in Washington counsel patience. The blockade is biting, they note, and U.S. intelligence has assessed the regime can withstand roughly 90 to 120 more days. But two things can be true at once. The blockade is hurting the regime and the regime does not care.<\/p>\n My family was one of those minorities. My mother pulled my brother and me out of Iran because being Jewish there had become dangerous, and she rebuilt our lives in America from nothing.<\/p>\n The ayatollah will starve his own people, shake down his neighbors and cut back-room deals with Moscow and Beijing before he yields. Meanwhile, every passing day writes another costly line in America\u2019s ledger. A war of attrition is the one war this regime can win, because it built the war that way on purpose.<\/p>\n![\"Ships](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1788168257_679_iran-ships-coast.png\")
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