The US and Israel have launched a struggle of aggression in opposition to Iran, based mostly on lies. We’re all now in deep, uncharted waters.
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A younger Iranian woman holds a rustic flag throughout a protest to sentence the US assaults on Iran’s nuclear amenities in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 22, 2025.
(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs)
Within the early hours of June 22, what the world had feared for many years—the factor that had been warned in opposition to because the one motion that would set the Center East absolutely alight—lastly occurred. American stealth bombers, armed with almost 30,000-pound bunker busters, struck Iran’s nuclear amenities, casting us all into deep, uncharted waters.
In the long run, the strike was attributable to circumstances many had lengthy foreseen—with Israel launching a struggle with Iran after which pulling the USA into the following storm. Donald Trump, for all his “America First” posturing, proved to be simply malleable for Benjamin Netanyahu, Fox Information, and the neocons lurking round Washington, going from hesitating to get entangled to demanding Iran’s “unconditional give up” in just some days. “God Bless Israel” even got here earlier than “God Bless America” within the president’s speech asserting these strikes.
The shock of our new regular nonetheless lingers, however this was all the time coming. Like a pot being dropped at a gradual boil, the previous two years of regional battle—from the US-backed genocide in Gaza to Israel’s assaults on virtually all of its neighbors—have damaged previous almost each beforehand present regulation of struggle, each pink line, each seeming shred of rational pondering shielding the Center East from the precipice of complete catastrophe. In line with such a wretched pattern, a big American assault on Iranian soil, carried out after the US overtly deceived the nation throughout alleged nuclear negotiations, ought to have been seen as an inevitability.
Even on the earth of US intelligence, the consensus has lengthy been, and continues to be, that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program. It had signed as much as a nuclear deal to complement at civilian ranges in the course of the Obama administration that Trump then tore up in his first time period. It had been in negotiations with the US and Israel—the latter of which truly has hidden a nuclear weapons program from the world (and IAEA inspectors) for many years—when these two states launched this struggle. However within the aftermath of the US strikes, America’s unparalleled capability to show actuality on its head was on full show.
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When his personal director of nationwide intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, echoed the conclusions of the intelligence neighborhood, Trump stated plainly that he “didn’t care.” Afterward, Trump stated, even after he unilaterally attacked one other nation with out congressional authorization, that “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” In his handle to the nation, Trump once more known as on Iran to “make peace” in a struggle that Israel had began and America had now accelerated.
Iran had been advised to give up its sovereign, internationally acknowledged proper to complement uranium in alternate for zero sanctions aid by way of “negotiations.” It refused. Now, after being shaken by bombs and homicide, Iran was being advised, explicitly, to give up once more. It’s once more refusing.
International Minister Abbas Araghchi has acknowledged that Iran reserves the precise to a “legit response in self-defense.” President Masoud Pezeshkian joined crowds of demonstrators in Tehran demanding a response to the American assaults. Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei, hidden away in a secret location to keep away from an assassination strike, has but to remark however is unlikely to abruptly determine to acquiesce.
Nonetheless, even because the Iranian institution stays united as ever on the query of Iran’s proper to answer such aggression, what it may well do on this second is far much less outlined.
Iran now stands at an undeniably tough crossroads. It’s being provided a cursed off-ramp: a chance to avoid wasting face, because it did following the October 2024 assaults by Israel. Then, the Iranian state was fast to brush off the assaults, dismissing them as insubstantial. 4 Iranian troopers had been killed, however the pledge of a positive retaliation felt like reflex moderately than a promise.
Right here, the stakes are far bigger on both facet of the equation. A whole bunch of Iranians have thus far been killed, and Israel and Iran are constantly exchanging missiles. Iran’s nuclear amenities at Fordow and Natanz lie severely broken, although admittedly not fully “obliterated” in the best way Trump first claimed. The USA has already declared a large victory, and Israel says that it hopes the struggle will finish this week. The Iranian media initially tried to assert harm was extra restricted at Fordow and that individuals in close by Qom had been unaffected, whilst anchors on state TV promised extreme retaliation that will make “the fires in Los Angeles” appear like nothing, and as Qom’s consultant in parliament requested Trump to start making coffins for the American troopers who would you should definitely quickly die.
Regardless of all these threats, Iran should function inside the actuality that a lot US propaganda seeks to obscure: that it’s a non-nuclear nation preventing two nuclear-armed states, together with essentially the most highly effective army within the historical past of the world. An prolonged taking pictures struggle with the USA, irrespective of how a lot its army has skilled for this, is a extreme danger, to say the least. In making an attempt to keep away from this, Iran arguably has no good choices.
If it acts on its earlier guarantees to satisfy American strikes with strikes on American bases across the area, additional and extra devastating American involvement is sort of assured. If it strikes to as an alternative shut the important waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, as former cupboard ministers and nationwide newspapers at the moment are advocating, earlier American army guarantees to maintain the strait open by drive would undeniably be introduced again to the fore. If it chooses extra dramatic diplomatic strikes, like withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty that forbids nuclear weapons (as many parliamentarians at the moment are advocating), there isn’t a indication that the Iranian authorities would even pursue the logical end result of that call. IRGC Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaee and President Pezeshkian have signaled that they nonetheless won’t ever search nuclear weapons due to Khamenei’s fatwa in opposition to these weapons.
If Iran does determine to retaliate and America turns into much more concerned, in no matter type which will take, the overseas allies that Iran may name to its assist aren’t what they was, pre–October 7. The late Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as soon as promised that “struggle in opposition to Iran would imply struggle in opposition to the whole Resistance Axis.” Nasrallah has now been assassinated by Israel, and Hezbollah, as soon as Iran’s strongest non-state ally, is not ready to intervene, advocating as an alternative that individuals elevate their voices in opposition to the struggle.
Houthi army officers introduced earlier than the strikes that they’d restart their Purple Sea blockade in opposition to American industrial vessels and strike American warships if America entered the struggle in opposition to Iran. Although one in every of their spokespeople at first stated following the strikes that the brink had been crossed, the risk appeared to have been walked again a number of hours later when it grew to become clear that Iran had not requested them to try this on its behalf simply but.
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There have been sparks of the type of collective retaliation promised in battles previous: Iraqi teams have promised reprisals in opposition to American bases inside their very own nation, and even South Asian teams like Liwa Fatemiyoun have vowed to assault Western pursuits in Pakistan ought to Khamenei be assassinated, as has been beforehand threatened by Israeli officers and by Trump himself. As for what these teams can truly do now, one can’t escape the popularity that it pales compared to what may very well be carried out earlier than the so-called Axis of Resistance started to crumble final yr.
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This results in the query of what might happen if Iran, by nevertheless unlikely an opportunity, chooses “peace”—that’s to say “peace” within the Trumpian parlance. Iran would doubtless be placed on the trail to eliminating all of its nuclear capabilities underneath American supervision, with no promise of sanctions aid, and with not even the assure of a true-blue ceasefire. As within the supposed ceasefires with Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has had the flexibility to proceed to strike unilaterally, generally every day, at something it perceives to be a risk, whereas the opposite celebration has no recourse in any respect. In the meantime, Israel prepares to provoke one other struggle in opposition to a now way more weakened and remoted enemy.
Iran could also be shopping for time to determine its subsequent transfer, however the clock is ticking. The drums of additional struggle are already starting to beat as American media retailers conjure up fantasies of Iranian “sleeper cells” working round the USA, and Vice President JD Vance saying that Iran’s uranium stockpile, unaffected by these strikes, will have to be handled “within the coming weeks.” Vance insists that these shall be handled by way of “conversations with the Iranians.” Iran’s current historical past with such conversations doesn’t encourage a lot belief.
Ultimately, Iran’s ballistic missile provides will run low, with its manufacturing interrupted and its army nonetheless underneath fixed hearth. In imposed conflicts, not often does the nation struggle has been imposed on have many good choices. In Iran’s case, not solely can it not belief the People nevertheless it can’t belief Europe, whose nations are additionally now demanding zero enrichment, both. The nation is now being pressured in report time to rethink its regional alliances, its army technique, and its outlook for the long run. No matter what occurs within the subsequent few weeks, nothing would be the similar. Regardless of the tough selections for Iran, and the Center East, which can be forward, some Houthi officers stay optimistic. Abdul-Malik al-Ejri, a political bureau official, wrote on X the night time after the American assaults:
There are deep-rooted modifications within the construction of the worldwide and regional order that no political drive, irrespective of how highly effective or tyrannical, can cease. Sure, they’ll destroy and devastate, they might be hindered or delayed for years, however they won’t cease. Nice empires have tried to halt historic transformations on the peak of their supremacy, however historical past’s crafty was all the time stronger.”
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Writer, The Nation
Séamus Malekafzali
Séamus Malekafzali is a journalist and author primarily specializing in the politics of the Center East.
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