Iran does not believe Trump. That is the simplest explanation for what is happening, and the most dangerous one. On April 29, at four in the morning Eastern time, the President posted on Truth Social an AI image of himself in a dark suit and sunglasses holding an assault rifle, with explosions on a hillside behind him, under a banner that read “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY.”

Hours later, the Wall Street Journal reported that in a Monday Situation Room meeting Trump had instructed his advisors to prepare for an extended naval blockade of Iranian ports, choosing siege over bombardment but warning his team to keep the bombardment option warm. Tehran read all of this and did not flinch.

The pattern Tehran has memorized

It did not flinch on April 6 either, when Trump told reporters at the White House that every bridge in Iran would be decimated by midnight the following night and every power plant out of business, burning, exploding, never to be used again. It did not flinch the next morning when he posted that a whole civilization would die that night. The deadline was extended. Then again. Then a Pakistani-mediated ceasefire was announced with hours to spare.

Tehran took notes. The pattern is clear, the threats escalate, the deadlines slide, the bombs do not fall. Trump bluffs at maximum volume and folds at the last minute. Iran has counted the bluffs and decided that the cost of betting on another one is lower than the cost of folding.

The bet the regime is making

The arithmetic the regime is running goes something like this. Brent crude touched one hundred twenty-six dollars on April 30, a four-year high, almost double the price of one year ago. Citi warns it could spike to one hundred fifty if the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted through the end of June. The IRGC threatened in March to drive it to two hundred. Every day Hormuz remains closed, the global economy bleeds.

American gasoline hit four dollars thirty a gallon. Slovenia rations fuel. Ireland is in political crisis over fuel protests. Iran’s calculation is that the world breaks before Iran does, that the West loses its appetite for confrontation before Tehran loses the ability to fight, that some president somewhere blinks first and the blockade is lifted in exchange for face-saving concessions on the four hundred forty kilograms of uranium safeguarded........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)