What is going on with Iran? It’s been several weeks now since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint strike Operation Epic Fury. Within days, Iran’s air force and air defense system were annihilated, as was its navy.

Furthermore, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike along with a number of the Islamic regime’s political and military leaders. In the weeks that followed, any new leader who stepped up was eliminated. This has created confusion and an apparent lack of centralized leadership. Who is really calling the shots within the regime?

Supposedly, Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is the new supreme leader, although he has yet to make public remarks or a public appearance. According to various reports, he was badly wounded by a strike and is recovering in hiding. Obviously, he doesn’t want to show his face (or what’s left of it) for fear of his location being given away and suddenly swallowing an Israeli missile.

Tehran’s move to shut down the Strait of Hormuz has resulted in what appears to be a bit of a Mexican standoff. The Iranian regime was attempting to either get President Donald Trump to back off his denuclearization demands or to bait Trump into committing U.S. troops to a ground offensive against Iran, which would inevitably result in American soldiers getting killed, further souring both U.S. and world opinion against the operation.

Trump responded by doing neither. Instead, he offered a ceasefire for negotiations and then closed the Strait to any Iranian shipping, effectively blocking off a significant portion of Iran’s economic lifelines.

The aggressive Trump, who warned Tehran that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" and threatened to blast Iran into "oblivion” and “back to the Stone Ages” if it didn’t open the Strait, has suddenly turned to playing the slow pressure game.

Now, six weeks after Operation Epic Fury began, the Islamic Republic is facing the reality that it is broke and its economy is in collapse. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “The war has thrown around one million people out of work directly and another million indirectly. … That is a significant portion of the roughly 25 million people who are normally employed in Iran.”

The Journal adds, “The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67 percent in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month.”

Long story short, Iran is in big-time economic trouble. While the mullahs may have the will to continue resisting the U.S., they don’t have the economic power to do so. It’s a simple matter of money.

While the Iran operation has negatively impacted the U.S. economy, primarily causing the price of gas to rise to the highest level since Joe Biden dropped his inflation bomb, Trump is in a fine position to wait out the Iranians. Iranian leaders are likely betting on outlasting Trump, seeing the upcoming midterms as a pressure gauge that would force the president to concede to their demands, primarily that they maintain their nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile programs.

However, it’s now looking like the regime is near the end of its economic rope. And Trump appears content to keep up an economic chokehold against Iran and simply wait out the regime. Why not? He clearly has the upper hand.