Iterative is a fully on-chain project.
One of the many things this implies, is that we're deploying literally everything onto the blockchain, and this comes with an insane cost if we are not mindful of gas costs.
Additionally, we are not a project looking for a fast pump; this is a long term build, and as such we have folks genuinely interested in being a part of our vision. Therefore, we don't want to force folks to blow their ETH on gas, when there is no actual rush to launch mint.
We want this to be equitable and fair for both folks waiting to mint, and for our coffers that will be supporting this project's long term goals.
tl;dr: We are waiting for gas to go down so we can justify deployment + launching mint.