The White House announced a deadline – Monday at midnight – to “obliterate Iran’s power plants,” then, five days later, extended it “on account of very productive talks.” The extension was not granted by Iran, nor by any third party, but declared unilaterally by the United States, as if time itself were subject to its discretion. What appeared on the surface as a tactical pause – diplomacy in motion – was in fact the performance of power without authority: a demand dressed as negotiation, a threat disguised as patience.

Power, in this instance, was not exercised through coercion alone, but through the suspension of time – by shifting the horizon of expectation without altering the terms. The Iranian regime, of course, responded in kind: another ultimatum, another deadline, another extension, each one less credible than the last. But the real drama was not in Tehran or Washington – it was in the theater of legitimacy, where procedure masqueraded as judgment. Every statement was phrased as if the parties were engaged in a shared inquiry, when in fact both sides had already decided the only acceptable outcome: the other’s subordination.

The EU’s presence in Moscow – reported as if it were a diplomatic breakthrough – adds another layer of confusion. Presence is not participation; attendance at a table is not the same as being seated at a table where decisions are made. To sit beside a power that treats time as malleable, as it suits its convenience, is not to bring order to chaos – it is to risk being absorbed into its rhythm.

Thinking would have required asking: what is the purpose of these deadlines, if not to produce compliance? And if compliance is the only goal, then what becomes of the public space – the polis – where action and speech, not threats and delays, constitute politics?

The danger is not that the world is ending. The danger is that we stop distinguishing between the performance of decision and the act of judging.