MADRID - More than eight months have passed since Trump and Netanyahu launched their war on Iran, a war Trump thought would be over within days. Where does it stand today?
The United States has failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. All of its military bases in the Persian Gulf have been destroyed or critically damaged. The Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control. Iran has endured 40 days of attacks, but the state has survived. And, above all, Iran’s nuclear program, the main stated justification for the war, remains, for now, outside the scope of negotiations. The war also brought the assassination of the former Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who had long opposed the development of nuclear weapons. During his tenure, the debate was practically closed to public discussion because of a fatwa, an Islamic legal opinion, issued in 2003 that categorically prohibited the production and use of nuclear and biological weapons. The legal and political weight of this fatwa was such that, in 2021, the then Intelligence Minister, Mahmoud Alavi, drew harsh criticism from Islamic jurists after suggesting that, if cornered, Iran should consider possessing nuclear weapons to defend itself. His assassination, and the subsequent rise of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to leadership, may bring a change in the Islamic Republic’s strategic calculations.
