The strikes have stopped, but in Tehran, many now ask whether Washington has simply moved the war into markets, sea lanes, and daily life.
The Cradle
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For 70 consecutive nights, Tehran’s bustling streets have remained alive long after the US-Israeli war of aggression on the Islamic Republic.
The rain-soaked evenings of the war’s first days have given way to warmer spring nights, but the habit remains. Cafes are crowded again. Traffic has returned to the capital’s main arteries. Public squares fill after dusk with students, workers, families, veterans, and young people arguing over politics with a rawness rarely heard before the war.
On the surface, Tehran is alive. Beneath it, the city is holding its breath.
There is little triumphalism here, but no sense of defeat either. During several nights spent speaking with residents across central Tehran, one theme repeatedly emerged: many Iranians believe the country entered the ceasefire from a position of military strength, yet now finds itself trapped in a more dangerous phase of economic and political pressure.
That contradiction has become one of the defining tensions of post-war Iran.
Speaking to The Cradle, Ali, a resident, gathered among nightly crowds in central Tehran, says:
“We should not continue this ceasefire under these conditions. America imposed maritime pressure on Iran, targeted Iranian ships, and even regional tensions escalated further, yet Washington still insists that none of these incidents constitute a violation of the ceasefire. So many people here are asking what exactly this ceasefire even means anymore.”
For Ali and many others The Cradle encountered, the ceasefire no longer feels like peace. It feels like the continuation of war through other means.
A ceasefire without relief
In recent weeks, public anger has increasingly focused not on battlefield losses, but on what many perceive as a gradual economic siege against the country. The rising dollar, the weakening national currency, uncertainty surrounding negotiations, and fears of new sanctions now dominate discussions across Tehran more than the war itself.
What makes this atmosphere especially striking is that many Iranians insist the economic deterioration accelerated after the fighting stopped, not during the war.
Throughout both the 12-day war of June 2025 and the 39-day confrontation months later, Iran’s currency remained comparatively stable. In some periods, it even strengthened slightly. Yet once the ceasefire took hold, the market abruptly shifted.
That sequence has fueled widespread speculation inside Iran.
Many residents now openly question whether at least part of the current economic anxiety is political rather than purely structural.
Saeed Leylaz, a prominent Iranian economist often associated with the country’s moderate political camp, recently challenged claims that the war had inflicted catastrophic economic damage on Iran. According to Leylaz, sections of Iran’s political and media establishment are exaggerating the scale of the crisis and amplifying fears of collapse in order to pressure society toward accepting concessions in negotiations with Washington.
That argument has found a receptive audience among politically engaged segments of Tehran’s urban population.
A growing number of Iranians now believe the country is entering a phase of “post-war economic pressure” in which the battlefield has shifted from airstrikes, missiles, and drones to inflation, sanctions, currency instability, and maritime restrictions.
The ambiguity surrounding the ceasefire has only deepened these concerns.
Inside Tehran, many people no longer discuss the conflict solely in military terms. Conversations now revolve around deterrence, economic endurance, negotiations, and whether Washington’s ultimate objective was always gradual exhaustion rather than direct military victory.
Washington’s longer war
Hamid Tahermansh, a telecommunications engineering PhD student at Tarbiat Modares University, frames the conflict through a broader geopolitical lens:
“After the Second World War, America introduced itself as the world’s military and economic superpower. Then it began targeting countries that challenged its interests: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Iran.”
For Tahermansh, the confrontation with Iran cannot be separated from the country’s geostrategic position along global energy routes, or from Tehran’s refusal to submit fully to the US regional order.
“The goal,” he argues, “has always been to create internal dissatisfaction through sanctions and economic pressure, weaken morale, and eventually force political surrender.”
Whether one agrees with Tahermansh or not, such views are no longer confined to ideological circles. They are increasingly shaping public discussion about the country’s future, especially among younger Iranians who experienced the war not through memory, but through nights in the streets.
Amir Mohammad, a medical student at Shahid Beheshti University, tells The Cradle that he has spent nearly every night outside in Tehran since the war began.
“We were here through the rain, through the missile attacks, and now through the spring nights. A lot of people realized after the war that America’s problem with Iran is not just about uranium or negotiations. Many people now believe the issue is Iran’s independent power itself.”
Like many young Iranians The Cradle spoke with, Amir Mohammad viewed the Strait of Hormuz not simply as a shipping route, but as one of Iran’s few remaining strategic deterrence tools.
“We should never lose Hormuz,” he says. “For us, it’s one of the only real tools we have against sanctions and pressure.”
This perception reflects an important shift taking place within parts of Iranian society after the war. For many residents, maritime pressure and economic sanctions are no longer viewed as separate from military confrontation. Instead, they are increasingly understood as different phases of the same conflict.
That helps explain why the maritime restrictions imposed after the ceasefire triggered such intense reactions. Many residents saw them not as post-war stabilization measures, but as proof that Washington intended to keep applying pressure regardless of the ceasefire terms.
Several people argue that Iran would make a strategic mistake if it treated maritime pressure merely as a negotiable issue.
“The blockade itself came after the ceasefire,” one politically active resident in Tehran tells The Cradle. “If Iran negotiates over reopening Hormuz in exchange for lifting pressure, then it risks surrendering one of its main deterrence tools.”
Between resistance and fatigue
Still, Tehran is not moving in one ideological direction.
Economic anxiety is real. Prices continue rising. Families worry about employment, housing, and the future value of their savings. Shopkeepers openly speak about uncertainty. Even many people strongly opposed to Washington privately express fears that prolonged instability could eventually produce social unrest similar to earlier waves of protests.
This dual reality defines Tehran today.
On one side stands a society that does not believe it was militarily defeated and, in some cases, even believes it gained strategic leverage during the war. On the other stands a population increasingly exhausted by economic pressure and uncertain whether negotiations will reduce tensions or simply produce new forms of vulnerability.
The result is a city suspended between resistance and fatigue.
Contrary to many outside portrayals, Tehran after the war does not resemble a collapsing capital. But neither does it resemble a society fully at peace. Instead, the city feels trapped in an unresolved transition, where the military phase of the conflict may have paused, yet the political and economic phases are only intensifying.
For many Iranians, the central question is no longer whether the war ended. It is whether the most prolonged, psychologically exhausting stage of the conflict has only just begun.
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