the edit, vol. 24.

the logic of force, and the logic of everything after it 

there is a version of this story that is simple. iran was building a bomb. the united states, alongside israel, destroyed the facilities. the threat is gone. that version ends there. but we are not living in that version.

what the white house said, and what the record shows

the official justification for operation midnight hammer — the june 2025 u.s. strikes on natanz, fordow, and isfahan — rested on two premises. first, that iran's nuclear program had reached a point of imminent danger. second, that diplomacy had been exhausted.

both claims deserve scrutiny.

when the u.s. and israel struck iran in june, neither government presented intelligence suggesting that iran had decided to weaponize its nuclear program. the iaea's own director-general said publicly that the agency had found no evidence of a structured weapons program. the agency's director-general, rafael mariano grossi, condemned the strikes and told the un security council that "armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place." 

on the question of diplomacy: accounts of recent diplomatic efforts suggest that the trump administration did not exhaust the negotiating process or engage in a good-faith effort to compromise. in the days before the u.s. attack, the iranian government had indicated a willingness to sign a comprehensive nuclear nonproliferation agreement. mediators in oman said the deal on the table would have gone far beyond all previous agreements. 

this is not to say the concern was invented. iran's program was real and accelerating. by may 2025, the iaea reported iran had sharply increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity.. just below weapons-grade — reaching over 408 kilograms, a nearly 50% rise since february, and enough for multiple nuclear weapons if further enriched. the trajectory was alarming. the question was whether military action was the only available response, and whether it would work.

the answer to the second question remains genuinely contested. u.s. director of national intelligence tulsi gabbard said iran's nuclear facilities were "destroyed" and it would take "years" for iran to rebuild. the iaea's grossi assessed that iran could resume uranium enrichment in a "matter of months." the pentagon, in july 2025, estimated one to two years. the gap between these assessments is not small. it is the entire strategic question.

what is less contested: the strikes did not destroy iran's nuclear knowledge, and they did not account for the enriched uranium that had already been stockpiled. the june 2025 attacks severely damaged iran's major uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to retain a nuclear program or its nuclear know-how. nor did the operation remove or account for 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent that iran already had stockpiled. 

a brief history of how we got here: jcpoa, obama, and the cost of withdrawal

to understand the present, you have to understand what was dismantled.

the jcpoa — the joint comprehensive plan of action, negotiated in 2015 under the obama administration — was not a perfect agreement. it had a sunset clause. it did not address iran's ballistic missiles. israel, under netanyahu, opposed it fiercely, arguing it legitimized rather than constrained iran's program.

but what it did do was place iran's nuclear program under active international monitoring. iaea inspectors had eyes inside the facilities. breakout time — the window to produce enough weapons-grade material for a bomb — was extended from weeks to over a year. that was the architecture.

in 2018, trump withdrew from the deal. iran, citing that withdrawal, began expanding its enrichment program. by 2025, it had accumulated enough enriched material that the same calculation that once took a year could theoretically take weeks. the very crisis the june strikes were meant to address was, at minimum, accelerated by the 2018 exit from the agreement that was monitoring it.

this is not a partisan observation. it is a sequencing problem. the withdrawal created the urgency that justified the strikes that may have, in turn, created a new urgency.

what happened when the leader was killed

on february 28, 2026, in what the trump administration called operation epic fury, u.s. and israeli forces struck a compound in tehran. ali khamenei was assassinated in a series of airstrikes conducted by israel and the united states; his death was confirmed by the iranian supreme national security council and by state media the following day. 

the stated logic: decapitate the regime, create an opening for new leadership, new direction, perhaps a deal.

what happened instead was the iron law of unintended succession.

iran named mojtaba khamenei as its new supreme leader about a week after the assassination of his father. the assembly of experts named the 56-year-old to lead the islamic republic through the biggest crisis in its 47-year history. mojtaba khamenei is widely viewed as a hard-line figure with close ties to the powerful revolutionary guard. the u.s. had sanctioned him in 2019 for advancing his father's "destabilizing regional ambitions."

trump called the selection "unacceptable" and said the new leader "is not going to last long" without u.s. approval. israel's military warned it would consider him a target. senator lindsey graham said the new leader was "not the change we're looking for."

but the regime had made its point in the choosing. a scholar at the american university of beirut described the appointment as "an act of defiance" — iran telling the u.s. and israel: "you wanted to get rid of our system? well, this is a more radical person than his father, who was assassinated."

mojtaba khamenei's first public statement vowed to keep blocking the strait of hormuz and to attack neighboring countries hosting u.s. military bases. he also vowed vengeance for "the blood of our children" after a strike on an elementary school that iranian officials said killed more than 170 people, mostly children. a u.s. military investigation found the u.s. was likely responsible, with outdated intelligence to blame.

there is no plan for what happens next.

the hormuz problem, and the world we are alienating

this is where the piece opens into something larger — because the consequences of the strait of hormuz closing are not primarily american. they are asian.

news of iran's closure of the strait of hormuz sent oil prices above $120 per barrel, their highest levels since 2022. japan, south korea, china — economies almost entirely dependent on hormuz for their energy supply — are watching this conflict not as observers, but as parties to the disruption. a six-week interruption would not merely slow the chinese economy. it would seize it.

this is precisely the kind of situation that used to be managed through the architecture of western alliances — through coordination, advanced signaling, shared intelligence, and economic buffers like coordinated strategic reserve releases. instead, the administration moved unilaterally, without seeking congressional approval, without notifying key allies in advance, and without a stated exit strategy.

the irony is structural. america's greatest leverage in the middle east has never been purely military. it has been the ability to convene — to bring gulf states, asian importers, european partners, and regional actors into a framework where u.s. leadership meant something other than unilateral force. that leverage is not enhanced by demonstrating that the united states will act without consultation. it is diminished by it.

the gulf states are watching. south korea is watching. japan is watching. and they are all, quietly, beginning to price in a world where dependence on u.s.-led security architecture carries more risk than it once did.

that is the longer cost. not the price of the bombs. the price of the trust.

the noise problem, and the absence of seriousness

there is a speaker problem embedded in all of this. the loudest american voice in this conflict has been senator lindsey graham, who has suggested the new supreme leader will "meet the same fate as his father." this is not strategy. it is theater. and in the absence of a coherent, communicable strategy, theater fills the vacuum.

where is the exit framework? what are the defined conditions for cessation of hostilities? what diplomatic back-channel is being maintained? what is the ask, specifically, of iran's new leadership — and is there any version of that ask that leaves them a path to accept it?

these are not rhetorical questions. they are the operational questions that strategy answers. right now, the public answer is silence and escalatory rhetoric — a combination that historically does not end well.

another wave of u.s. or israeli attacks on iran would likely drive iranian leaders away from negotiations and strengthen the argument inside iran that only possessing nuclear weapons can protect the state from external attack. other nations in the middle east and beyond would likely draw the same conclusion, increasing the odds of nuclear proliferation in the years ahead. 

what a serious approach would look like

a serious approach would have started with strategic reserve releases, coordinated with asian allies, before striking — so that the hormuz disruption did not become an immediate global economic shock. it would have kept a diplomatic channel open through oman or qatar, as prior administrations have done. it would have engaged south korea, japan, and the eu with advance briefings so that the architecture of the unified west held rather than fractured.

it would have articulated a clear, achievable political outcome — not "regime change" (which produces mojtaba khamenei) and not "zero enrichment forever" (which no iranian government can accept domestically), but something negotiable. something that returned iaea access, constrained enrichment levels, and built a verification architecture — which is, roughly, what the jcpoa was.

instead: a wounded tiger, an angrier successor, a closed strait, a fractured alliance, and no defined endpoint.

the larger frame

the people who say this was about christianity versus islam are not describing foreign policy. they are describing a culture war they have mapped onto geopolitics, and the mismatch is dangerous because it forecloses thinking.

the actual stakes are: nuclear proliferation in the world's most volatile region; the stability of global energy markets; the credibility of american leadership among the allies whose cooperation we need to remain a first-tier power; and the question of whether military force without a political strategy produces security or just reshuffles the threat.

these are serious questions. they deserve the seriousness that has, so far, been largely absent.

the world does not stand still while we sort out our narrative. neither does mojtaba khamenei.

the veritas edit publishes sundays. this piece reflects publicly available reporting and analysis as of march 2026.