Iran’s leadership remains deeply distrustful of President Donald Trump’s intentions and is treating the current lull in fighting less as a path to peace than as a window to prepare for its resumption, according to reporting and officials’ own public statements over recent months.
Tehran is steering the country toward what officials describe as a “survival economy,” the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people close to Iran’s leadership and negotiating team. The paper reported that Tehran is rationing scarce goods, restricting access to foreign currency, cutting investment and shifting more of the burden onto households, while preserving strategic imports and the core machinery of the state.
Analysts describe this as a calculated trade-off rather than simple economic misfortune. Hadi Khalazadeh, a researcher at the Quincy Institute and former senior Iranian Social Security Organization official, told the Journal that the approach shifts Iran “from a resilient economy that can absorb shocks to a survival economy that keeps functioning, but over time loses its ability to recover.” He added that the structure of the regime makes it difficult for economic damage alone to translate into pressure heavy enough to change decisions on national security. In effect, the hardship is being absorbed by the population specifically so the state’s negotiating position and security apparatus stay intact.
People close to Iran’s senior negotiators told the Journal the current talks could prove only an interlude before renewed conflict. That fits a pattern from the war’s earlier ceasefire: in April, IRGC Aerospace Force commander Brig. Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi said publicly that Iran’s pace of “updating and refilling missile and drone launch platforms” during that ceasefire period exceeded pre-war rates, a claim carried by Tasnim and PressTV and later noted by outlets including Alhurra and the Jerusalem Post. Independent analysts cautioned at the time that the claim likely overstated the scale of rebuilding, closer to reopening damaged storage and launch sites than large-scale new production, but agreed that reconstitution activity was real and documented. It isn’t confirmed whether the same pattern is repeating during the current pause, but the precedent underscores why Western officials and analysts have treated ceasefire periods with Iran cautiously rather than as evidence of de-escalation.
Mehdi Mohammadi, a strategic adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (who has served as Iran’s chief negotiator, though Israeli and Iranian-opposition outlets reported last week that he may have stepped back from that role amid internal disputes), described the current stalemate as “the calm before the storm.” In an earlier social media post, Mohammadi said one factor driving the continued conflict was what he called a “generational project of blood revenge” over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the war’s opening strikes. “The Iranian nation still has many unfinished matters with Trump,” he said. “Iran is prepared for the great confrontation.”
That kind of rhetoric carries a domestic political function as well as a foreign-policy one. Iran International reported that the June memorandum of understanding exposed real divisions inside Iran’s political and media establishment, with hardliners, particularly the Paydari Front, attacking the deal as a betrayal of revolutionary principles, even as experts told the outlet the disagreement was less about whether to preserve the Islamic Republic than about how. Separately, Hooshang Amirahmadi, president of the American Iranian Council, told Fox News that Iranian officials who push for negotiation risk being “considered traitors” and “most likely eliminated,” an indication of how narrow the space for dissenting, concession-minded voices has become inside the system. Framed against that backdrop, language like Mohammadi’s “blood revenge” formulation does more than explain hardliner motives. It helps justify continued economic pain to the public while narrowing the room for internal figures to argue for compromise.
Tehran and Washington have taken steps to halt attacks and return to negotiations, but disputes over the terms and implementation of ceasefire arrangements have persisted throughout the summer. The latest reporting suggests that, despite continued diplomatic contact, figures close to Iran’s negotiating team regard renewed confrontation as a live possibility rather than a remote one. The intervening calm is being used by Tehran’s security establishment to prepare for it, not to move past it.
