Time is not a refuge

(JNS) — Tehran’s strategy is not to win but to last. For decades, it has managed pressure by extending timelines, calibrating escalation and avoiding decisive outcomes. The question now is whether that strategy—strategic delay—has reached its limits.

For years, policymakers treated time as neutral, something to be managed, extended or deferred. That assumption is increasingly untenable.

Time is not neutral. It is a forcing mechanism, not a refuge.

In the biblical tradition, time was never meant to be indefinite. It was a mechanism for correction, leading either to restoration or removal. That...