No Rationale for Presidential War on Iran
Image by Javad Esmaeili.
The president says Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. In his February 24 speech to Congress, he said of Iran’s leaders, “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”
This is untrue, as we have heard “those (not-at-all) secret words” many times.
For decades, Iran has declared that nuclear weapons production would violate principles of the Quran, the government’s holy book, that it is not pursuing a nuclear arsenal, and that its uranium enrichment is strictly for civilian uses. The enrichment of uranium for civil nuclear reactor fuel is permitted by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran is a party to this treaty, while the openly genocidal government of Israel, which possesses an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons, is not.
Speaking in Tehran on January 21, 2025, Ahmadreza Pourkhaghan, the head of Iran’s Armed Forces Judiciary, said, “The late Imam Khomeini did not allow the use of chemical weapons or any illegal and unconventional weapons, even against enemy forces,” and therefore, “it is based on this doctrine that the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] does not permit the armed forces of the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Saeid Golkar, at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, reported Feb. 11, 2025 that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and cited a religious decree, known as a fatwa, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which bans weapons of mass destruction as evidence of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”
In October 2003, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued an oral fatwa, or a religious order, declaring that nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic law, and condemning nuclear weapons as ‘haram’ (forbidden), and banning the production and use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in any form.
Ever since, Khamenei and other officials have repeatedly declared that Iran does not wish to produce nuclear weapons because Islamic law prohibits WMD.
For example, in 2021, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported that, “Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s years-old fatwa banning nuclear weapons is again making headlines. The regime and its supporters, including former nuclear spokesman Hossein Mousavian, have long claimed that the fatwa is permanent and adduced it as proof that Iran is religiously forbidden from acquiring such weapons.”
In 2019, the radio broadcast The World reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “said that Iran was not looking to acquire nuclear weapons for a surprising reason — that they were illegal under Islamic law.”
In 2012, Farhad Shahabi Sirjani, of the University of Kent, reported that, “[A]longside the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, special media attention was paid to a Fatwa (religious decree) issued by Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, banning all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons in particular.”
With a vast armada of U.S. Navy warships now menacing Iran, the memory of undeclared, unlawful, and unconstitutional U.S. forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ought to echo in the minds of Pentagon brass and White House advisors. The White House and the world know Iran has no WMD, and no propaganda campaign or ginned-up White Papers have even provided a pretext for another unprovoked U.S. war of aggression. The bombing of Iran last June, the bombing of Venezuela last January, and the ongoing bombing of civilian speed boats appear to have habituated the public to blindly gratuitous militarism.
The Collapse of the State, the Birth of Society: Iran
What is happening in Iran is not a “crisis.” A crisis implies a state of temporary imbalance. In Iran, however, what is collapsing is not a temporary order, but a historical political ontology.
The popular movement that began in Rojhilat (East) Kurdistan in December 2025 and spread to various Iranian cities has exposed the exhaustion of the state-centered concept of civilization, moving beyond mere opposition to the regime. This movement is neither the automatic result of economic impoverishment nor solely a consequence of political oppression.
What is erupting in Iran today is the irreversible rupture of the bond between society and the state. The state is no longer perceived as an authority rising above society, but as an obstacle that constricts the life of society and pushes it out of history.
Reading the situation in Iran through the lens of sanctions, diplomatic tensions, or intra-regime factional conflicts is to miss the heart of the matter.
U.S. sanctions, the Israel-Iran war-tensions, or regional proxy wars are not the causes of this crisis; they are merely external factors that accelerate existing contradictions. The source of developments in Iran is the historical character of the Iranian state, which does not recognize society as a political subject. This character has taken different ideological forms in different periods but has maintained its essence.
The sanctity of the Shah during the monarchy transformed into the infallibility of the jurist (faqih) under the Islamic Republic, yet the state’s view of society remained unchanged. In every instance, power has positioned itself above society, viewing the people either as a mass to be disciplined or an object to be managed.
For this reason, treating the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “Islamic deviation” or a “theocratic exception” is misleading. The problem in Iran is not the interference of religion in politics; it is the sacralization of the state. Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) is a theological version of the modern state.
Here, sovereignty is derived not from the people but from a transcendent source. However, this transcendence does not represent a realm belonging to God, but rather the immunity of a narrow core of power. The figure of the Faqih functions as a modern equivalent of the King. He is not elected, he is not accountable, and he cannot be criticized. This structure is the most refined form of the historical continuity of the Iranian state tradition.
In Iran, the state has never been the product of a social contract. On the contrary, it has existed as an apparatus that precedes society, shapes society, and subordinates society to itself. This is one of the fundamental differences that distinguishes Iran from many other states in the Middle East. In Iran, modernization has been a tool for the centralization of the state, not for social emancipation. The modern army, modern bureaucracy, and modern law were established not to empower society, but to fortify the state. Consequently, modernity in Iran has never acquired a democratic content.
The popular movement that began in December 2025 is the exact moment this historical accumulation erupted. The distinguishing feature of this movement is not so much the clarity of its demands, but the depth of the target it addresses. The anger rising in the streets is directed not only at the current holders of power but at the very nature of power itself.
People are not questioning the form of government; they are questioning the very act of being governed. This is a rare threshold in Iranian history. Historically, opposition in Iran has either demanded reform or aimed to seize power. For the first time on this scale, a social movement carries the traces of a political imagination that transcends the state.
At this point, confronting the historical role of the Iranian Left is inevitable. For many years, the Iranian Left presented itself as a tradition that was oppressed, liquidated, and victimized. This narrative is true to a certain extent, but it is incomplete. The real defeat of the Iranian Left was not just its suppression by the mullahs, but its failure to sufficiently problematize the state. During the struggle against the Shah’s regime, the Left identified the state with the monarchy, assuming that when the monarchy collapsed, the state would also collapse. This assumption was the greatest fallacy of 1979.
The 1979 Revolution was a social explosion. Workers, students, women, ethnic peoples, and slum neighborhoods were the primary elements of this explosion. However, this social energy could not produce its own political form. Neighborhood committees, workers’ councils, and local organizations could not be transformed into a permanent and centralized democratic structure.
The Left viewed these structures as temporary. Its primary goal was defined as seizing the state. The discourse of “anti-imperialist unity” established with the mullahs was the clearest expression of this strategic blindness. Anti-Americanism rendered the authoritarian and patriarchal character of the mullahs a secondary issue.
At this point, anti-imperialism ceased to be an emancipatory concept in the hands of the Iranian Left and became a statist reflex. Imperialism was identified solely with foreign powers. Local forms of domination were ignored. Yet, for the peoples of Iran, the most constant and concrete source of oppression was not foreign powers, but their own state.
The failure to grasp this reality eroded the social legitimacy of the Left. The issue of the Kurds and Rojhilat Kurdistan is one of the most striking examples of this erosion. Kurdish demands for equality and freedom were rejected either as a ploy of imperialism or through the risk of “dividing the revolution.” Thus, the Left was drifted into a position that overlapped with the official discourse of the state.
The fact that a large portion of the younger generation rising up in the streets of Iran today does not define itself as “Leftist” is a result of this historical baggage. This generation rejects a statist, hierarchical, and male-dominated political culture.
However, this rejection does not mean that demands for equality and freedom have vanished. On the contrary, these demands are being reproduced through a new language and practice outside the classical organizational forms of the Left. The women’s movement and the resistance in Rojhilat Kurdistan are the most concrete expressions of this new politicality.
Rojhilat Kurdistan is not the periphery of the crisis in Iran; it is the center. The historical character of the Iranian state becomes visible in its nakedness in this geography. Economic impoverishment, cultural suppression, and military rule have become the ordinary modes of governance in Rojhilat. Kurds have never been seen as equal citizens; they have always been coded as a potential security threat. This situation has fostered not a desire to integrate into the state among Kurds, but the development of a political consciousness toward “statelessness.”
The popular movement that began in Rojhilat Kurdistan in December 2025 is the mass expression of this consciousness. This movement can be explained neither by the direction of foreign powers nor by classical nationalist reflexes. What is revealed here is a search for life and politics outside the state. Women’s leadership, local solidarity networks, and horizontal organization practices are the concrete indicators of this search. These practices are an existential threat to the Iranian state because they effectively debunk the claim that the state is without alternative.
The current crisis in Iran gains historical meaning exactly at this point. This crisis is not about whether a regime will fall, but whether the state-centered understanding of civilization can be transcended.
If this movement is reduced once again to a search for a “better state,” the historical cycle will repeat itself once more. However, if this new orientation sprouting in Rojhilat Kurdistan, in the women’s movement, and in the state-distanced politicality of the younger generations can be deepened, a political horizon where society—not the state—is at the center may open for the first time in Iranian history.
The reason the state in Iran is so resilient, so long-lived, and so harsh is not just its capacity for repression. The power of the state stems from the regime of meaning it establishes before its weapons or security apparatus. The Iranian state has never presented itself as a temporary political arrangement. It has constructed itself as the necessary carrier of history, destiny, and order. Therefore, to oppose the state in Iran does not just mean opposing the government. It is coded as opposing history, order, and the “normal.” The state here has become an ontological assumption rather than a political actor.
This ontological assumption has systematically prevented the political subjectivation of Iranian society over long historical periods. Society has never been able to establish itself as the carrier of a collective will; it has either waited for a savior or existed in the shadow of a power. This situation also explains why rebellions in Iran are often explosive but discontinuous. Social anger accumulates, suddenly erupts, and shakes the state. However, because it cannot create its own political continuity, it is re-absorbed by the state. The state does not collapse; it merely changes its shell.
For this reason, almost none of the regime changes in Iranian history are a “change of state.” In the line extending from the Achaemenids to the Safavids, from the Qajars to the Pahlavis, and finally to the Islamic Republic, the forms of power have changed, but the logic of the state positioning itself above society has remained constant.
This continuity has transformed Iran into a state form that is not only oppressive but also deeply anti-social. Here, “anti-sociality” means not just the ignoring of society, but the constant rendering of society as an object of the state. Society exists, but it is not a subject.
Because of this, the concept of a “legitimacy crisis” is often used incompletely in Iran. The problem is not that the state has lost its legitimacy, but that the state has never derived its legitimacy from society.
The Iranian state has derived its legitimacy from historical continuity, sanctity, and necessity. The consent of the people has not been the source of this legitimacy, but at most its ornament. Elections, referendums, and constitutional arrangements are parts of these ornamentation mechanisms. The state engages in politics not to the extent that it needs consent, but to the extent that it manages consent.
The 1979 Revolution is the moment this structure cracked significantly for the first time. However, this crack did not eliminate the ontological position of the state; it merely transformed its ideological form. The revolution revealed the possibility of a “stateless society” in Iran, but it could not institutionalize this possibility. What was decisive here was that despite the mass power of the revolution, its political imagination could not move outside the state. Society rose up, but the society that rose up did not know how to establish its own power.
At this point, the role of the mullahs is usually misread. The mullahs were not the agents of the revolution; they were the actors who filled the void of the revolution.
Their success stemmed from representing a historical state reflex rather than ideological persuasion. For a significant portion of Iranian society, the mullahs represented the continuity of a familiar form of power rather than the risk of an unknown future. The revolution, in this sense, was perceived not as a radical rupture but more as a reorganization. This perception made the reconstruction of the state possible.
The tragedy of the Iranian Left begins exactly at this point. In 1979, the Left was faced with a rare opportunity offered by history: a moment when the state dissolved and the potential for society to organize itself was revealed. However, the Left chose to read this moment not to transcend the state, but to seize it. The overthrow of the Shah’s regime was the ultimate goal for the Left. The state itself was not sufficiently questioned. It was assumed that with the elimination of the monarchy, freedom would come automatically.
This assumption is the historical fallacy of the Left. Because the state is not a person or a dynasty. It is a structure that regulates social relations, reproduces hierarchy, and centralizes power. Instead of dismantling this structure, the Iranian Left thought it could fill it with “progressive” content.
Anti-imperialism became the ideological cloak of this thought. Everything was reduced to anti-Americanism. And anti-Americanism rendered the oppressive character of the state invisible. The authoritarianism of the mullahs was seen as a temporary and secondary problem.
At this point, the Iranian Left made a historical choice. It defended the sovereignty of the state, not the autonomy of society. This choice was presented as “anti-imperialist gains” in the short term. In the long term, however, the Left dug its own grave. The moment the state was reconstructed, it allowed no room for any force that built it. The Left was liquidated, unions were disbanded, the women’s movement was suppressed, and Kurdish regions were subjected to military operations. The state, once again, swallowed society.
What is important here is that this liquidation should not be read as a story of betrayal. The mullahs “breaking their word” or their “reactionism” does not explain the core of the problem. The problem is that from the beginning of the revolution, it was limited by a state-centered horizon.
The Left could not establish a form of social power that would suspend the state during the revolutionary moment. Neighborhood committees, workers’ councils, and local assemblies were seen not as permanent political structures, but as temporary tools. When the state returned, these structures were easily disbanded.
This historical defeat is not only an organizational but also a theoretical defeat for the Iranian Left. As long as the Left aims to seize power rather than distribute it, it cannot escape reproducing the logic of the state. This situation is not limited to Iran. However, it has become visible in a much more naked form in Iran. Because the Iranian state is historically one of the structures most prone to the centralization of power.
The most important feature of the popular movement that began in December 2025 is its distance from this historical burden. Those in the streets neither embrace the legacy of 1979 nor try to restore it. On the contrary, a conscious or intuitive rupture with this legacy is being experienced. The younger generations do not dream of seizing the state; they question the possibilities of a free life without the state. This questioning is not yet theoretically mature, but it is practically powerful.
The area where this power is most clearly revealed is Rojhilat Kurdistan. Because Kurds have experienced the direct colonial character of the Iranian state, rather than its “protective” one, in the most naked way. In the Kurdish geography, the state has never made a claim of legitimate representation; it has existed only as a mechanism of security, discipline, and control. This experience has produced not a reformist expectation toward the state among Kurds, but a non-state political consciousness.
The uprising that began in Rojhilat Kurdistan in December 2025 is the mass expression of this consciousness. What is demanded here is not a better administration or a more just state. What is demanded is an end to the encirclement of life by the state. Women’s leadership, the rapid establishment of local solidarity networks, and horizontal organization forms are the practical equivalents of this demand.
These practices directly target the ontological claim of the Iranian state.
The state, therefore, does not only want to suppress the movement in Rojhilat; it tries to declare it illegitimate. The narratives of “separatism,” “foreign plots,” and “terror” are tools of this effort to delegitimize. However, these narratives are no longer convincing.
Because the gap between the language of the state and the experience of society has grown too large to close. The state speaks, and society lives. These two realms no longer intersect.
The current rupture in Iran is exactly the becoming visible of this non-intersection. The state is still strong. But it is no longer believable. This is the most dangerous threshold for a regime. Because force can only temporarily replace consent. In the long run, the state collapses under its own weight. What has been happening in Iran since December 2025 shows that this collapse is not yet complete, but it has entered an irreversible process.
The question from here on is this: Will this collapse result in a new form of state, or will the state-centered understanding of civilization be truly transcended for the first time?
Iranian history shows that the first option has happened repeatedly. The second option has not yet been tried. What is sprouting in Rojhilat Kurdistan, in the women’s movement, and in the state-distanced politics of the younger generations are the first signs of this second possibility. It is possible to suppress this possibility. However, it is no longer possible to eliminate it.
The way the state in Iran controls society finds its most naked and intense expression in the dominance it establishes over the body. This dominance works not only through the force of the repressive apparatus but also through norms, moral regimes, and definitions of “correct living.” The state here considers it its right to regulate not only political behaviors but also the most private areas of daily life.
How one should dress, how one should love, how one should mourn, and even how one should think are included in the intervention area of political power. For this reason, power in Iran is not an abstract institution, but a concrete force that touches the body, shapes the body, and disciplines the body.
At the center of this contact lies the female body. Because the female body is the carrier of both the ideological and symbolic order of the Iranian state. The state builds its own continuity over the female body. And it assumes it controls society by controlling her. Mandatory veiling is only the visible face of this control.
The real issue is the constant conditioning of woman’s presence in the public sphere. A woman can only be a “proper” subject within the determined boundaries. The violation of these boundaries is perceived not as an individual deviation, but as a political threat.
For this reason, violence against women in Iran is not accidental or “cultural.” This violence is an ontological reflex of the state. Every time the state feels its existence is under threat, it re-fortifies its position over the female body. Morality police, court decisions, and media campaigns are the tools of this fortification. The female body is a battlefield the state resorts to in times of crisis. Because when the state cannot directly persuade society, it tries to force the body into line.
However, the popular movement that began in December 2025 has reversed this equation. Women have now stepped onto the stage not just as the targets of oppression, but as the subjects of resistance. This subjectivation is not a matter of symbolic representation.
Women are effectively suspending the rules of power in the street, in the neighborhood, and in every area of daily life. Removing the headscarf, uncovering the hair, or the body’s free existence in the public sphere is not an individual protest, but a collective challenge directed at the state’s ontological claim.
This challenge crystallizes in the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (Woman, Life, Freedom). This slogan is not a list of demands, but a vision of the world. It expresses an ontology that does not separate woman, life, and freedom from each other. Here, freedom is not a right granted by the state, but a condition derived from life itself. In this ontology, woman is positioned not as an object to be protected, but as a subject who reconstructs life. Therefore, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” is not just an oppositional slogan for the Iranian state; it is an existential threat.
The state’s reaction to this slogan clearly shows the magnitude of the threat. The state criminalizes, bans, and associates these three words with terrorism. Because this slogan boils down to debunking the state’s fundamental assumption: the idea that life can only be regulated through the state. Yet, this resistance practice led by women shows that life can be organized even without the state. Neighborhood solidarities, street networks, and horizontal relationships are the material counterparts of this practice.
At this point, it is insufficient to handle the issue of women’s freedom only at the level of “rights.” The women’s movement in Iran expresses much more than a liberal demand for equality. What is at stake here is the total rejection of the gendered structure of power.
Historically, the state has established itself as a male-dominated authority. The figures of father, leader, guide, and protector are symbols of this authority. The submissive and controlled position of women is the complementary element of this symbolic order. Women’s emancipation means the collapse of this order.
Therefore, the women’s resistance in Iran is directed not only at patriarchal norms but at the state itself. Women reject the state’s claim of “protection” and instead put forward the will to establish their own lives collectively. This will is not limited to classical political organization forms. It does not demand a party, a leader, or a central structure. On the contrary, it is distanced from such structures. This distance is a conscious anti-state reflex.
One of the areas where this reflex is strongest is again Rojhilat Kurdistan. Kurdish women have experienced both national oppression and patriarchal domination simultaneously and have produced a unique resistance politics from this experience. Women here are fighting not only against male dominance but also against the colonial character of the state. This dual struggle has made them the leading force of the general resistance in Iran.
The solidarity networks established by women in Rojhilat create areas where the state cannot intervene. These areas may not yet be called “autonomous regions.” But they are micro-spaces where non-state forms of relationship are effectively established. The state resorts to violence to disperse these areas. Because the expansion of these areas renders the state’s ontological claim meaningless. The state has to be everywhere. Because if its absence is accepted in one place, its absence everywhere becomes possible.
The depth of today’s rupture in Iran lies exactly here. The issue is not whether a regime can be reformed. The issue is that the state has begun to collapse along with its monopoly over life. Women have become the fundamental subjects accelerating this collapse. They are practically demonstrating that a life alternative to the state is possible. This practice has not yet turned into a comprehensive political program. However, it has already realized an ontological rupture.
It is not possible to take back this rupture. The state can increase the pressure, multiply arrests, and temporarily silence the streets. However, bodies no longer return to the old discipline regime. Fear has left its place to habit, and habit has left its place to indifference. The state’s orders are no longer perceived as internalized norms, but as external and alien impositions. When this perception changes, power effectively begins to dissolve.
The current process in Iran is the early stage of this dissolution. The state is still standing. But the bodies no longer belong to it. This rupture started by women is expanding by including men, youth, and different social segments. This expansion marks a transformation beyond classical revolutionary narratives. Here, the goal is not to seize power, but to eliminate power’s capacity to encircle society.
From here on, there are two paths for Iran. Either the state will try to suppress this rupture by intensifying violence and will re-establish control in the short term. Or this rupture will spread to different social areas and turn into an irreversible dissolution. The second possibility is still fragile. But it is no longer an abstract possibility. This breach opened through the bodies of women has reached the most protected area of the Iranian state.
