Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has warned US officials about the consequences of a war against Iran, urging them to break free from a “manufactured matrix”.

In a post on X on Thursday, Qalibaf used the metaphor of ten pills, all with negative outcomes, to challenge the choices presented to the Americans.

He suggested that the options are not meaningfully different and warned that accepting them will mean accepting all of them.

“Ten pills, all bad. No red, no blue. All soot. You don’t have to take any, but if you do, you will take all. Break the manufactured matrix. Leave.”

Qalibaf’s reference to a “manufactured matrix” and ten poisonous pills draws on The Matrix, the science-fiction film in which the protagonist, Neo, is offered a choice between a red pill, which reveals the hidden reality of the world, and a blue pill, which allows him to remain in an illusion.

By describing ten pills as equally bad, with “no red, no blue” and “all soot,” Qalibaf suggests that the choices presented to Washington are not genuine alternatives but variations of the same harmful outcome.

His message urges US officials to reject a false set of choices rather than accept the consequences of every option.

His closing words, “Break the manufactured matrix. Leave,” call on Washington to abandon the framework driving its decisions and withdraw rather than continue down a path that could bring further costs.

Eight months into the US war of aggression against Iran, American households are facing nearly $2,000 in additional costs per household, while the economic fallout is estimated to have cost the US economy $265 billion, says an economist.

The estimated cost is seven times the figure War Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Congress for the period from February 28, when the US and Israel launched their joint military aggression against Iran, through late July.

Hegseth’s figure covers only the direct military costs of the war. For American households, however, the financial burden has been far greater, as the war’s wider effects across global markets, particularly oil markets, have driven up inflation and everyday expenses.

Soaring energy prices account for the largest share of the financial burden, adding approximately $1,100 to each household’s expenses through higher fuel prices, home heating bills and transportation costs.

According to recent reporting by MS NOW, the Trump administration is increasingly disconnected from the financial realities of ordinary Americans, operating from what critics are calling a "billionaire bubble."