After the attacks, Iran is rethinking the nuclear brink.
More than eight months after the war between Trump and Netanyahu, the US failed to achieve its goals: the Gulf bases are destroyed, Hormuz remains under Iranian control and the country survived. The assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had long opposed nuclear weapons through a 2003 fatwa, changed the calculus. Since the attack occurred even though Iran did not have a bomb, the deterrence logic of deterrence is harder to sustain. Officials, including Mohsen Razai, are now openly discussing revising the doctrine. The irony: a war on the pretext of Iran's nuclear program could change it.