From Student Day on 13 Aban in Iran, where crowds chanted calls for Donald Trump's killing and revenge and carried slogans declaring that "nuclear deterrence is our inalienable right," to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin meeting with Mohsen Rezaei and the Republican Party's historic defeat in the US midterm elections, the war's spillover effects are reshaping three trajectories simultaneously.
These trajectories include the boundaries of Iran's nuclear policy, the depth of the Russian-Iranian strategic partnership, and the economic calculus of American domestic politics.
Underlying all three is a dynamic that has been repeatedly reinforced, which is the US-Israeli military aggression lending legitimacy to precisely the outcomes it seeks to prevent.
Erosion of the nuclear taboo: From marginal demand to establishment debate
For decades, Iran's nuclear policy was constrained by a religious edict issued by the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, prohibiting the development and use of nuclear weapons.
Today, however, voices from Friday prayer pulpits to street demonstrations are calling on the leadership to abandon its longstanding commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. Millions of Iranians, alongside lawmakers and political figures, are increasingly demanding a decisive and timely shift in the country's defense and nuclear doctrine.
At the highest political level, the shift is becoming explicit. Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, said in a state television interview that the leadership was debating whether to maintain its pre-war nuclear doctrine.
"No new decision has been made yet," he said. "But, of course, the debate now is whether we want to keep the same doctrine we had before the war."
Calls for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), once confined to the political margins, are also becoming increasingly prominent in national media.
In parliament, prominent figures have joined the debate, arguing that if Iran possessed nuclear weapons, its adversaries would not dare attack the country or target its leaders and ordinary citizens, including schoolchildren.
Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, in his recent remarks said that even before the war was imposed on Iran, 70 percent of Iranians supported acquiring nuclear weapons as a means of securing deterrence.
The underlying perception is increasingly clear: without the ultimate deterrent, Iran could remain vulnerable to attacks by the United States and Israel at any moment. Trump himself reinforced this perception when he said at a Republican convention in September that if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon, he would be "calling the leader politely."
The structural consequence is stark. Before the June 2025 strikes, the IAEA estimated Iran possessed 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity, a short step from the 90% needed for weapons-grade, and no other country has enriched to such a level without producing a weapon.
About 42 kg is enough for one weapon if further enriched; Iran's stockpile is roughly ten times that. Inspectors were withdrawn after the US-Israeli aggression and have had no access to Iran's four declared enrichment sites since. The IAEA's September 2026 report says it cannot establish the stockpile's size or location. Iran stayed short of a bomb and was attacked anyway.
For anti-imperialist constituencies globally, the unprovoked and illegal US-Israeli strikes, particularly those occurring during active nuclear negotiations, constitute a crude negation of the principle that sovereign states have the right to self-defense.
When diplomacy is proven ineffective as bombs fall, nuclear weapons as the "ultimate insurance" acquire renewed legitimacy within anti-imperialist discourse. This is not a simple endorsement of proliferation; it is an acknowledgment of a structural predicament.
In an order where a nuclear power can launch preemptive strikes against a state in the middle of nuclear negotiations, nuclear armament is viewed as a rational survival choice.
Russian-Iranian binding: From strategic partnership to substantive interdependence
The war on Iran has accelerated its eastward shift, with all-weather ally Russia emerging as its primary beneficiary. On November 5, 2026, Rezaei met with Putin at the Kremlin, delivering a message from the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei.
Their discussions focused on the ongoing war, Iran's seven conditions for beginning negotiations with the United States, a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Iran, and the implementation contract for the Rasht-Astara railway line.
The significance of this agenda goes far beyond the symbolic language of a “strategic partnership.” The gas pipeline would not only help alleviate Iran's energy shortages but also position the country as a transit corridor for Russian gas to neighboring states, further intertwining the two countries' energy interests.
The transport corridor, meanwhile, would integrate Iran into a regional logistics network less exposed to Western sanctions. At a time when the war is further isolating Iran from the international system, these increasingly binding economic ties carry existential urgency.
Economic blowback and electoral reckoning: Vance's "cutting losses"
The war's most direct economic transmission mechanism has been oil prices, which were approaching $120 per barrel on the eve of the midterm elections.
Brent crude had reached a late-October high of nearly $118, while futures jumped to $106.61 on November 3, the day before Americans went to the polls, following fresh US strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island. The OPEC basket price had stood at $115.86 at the end of October.
For American households, fuel costs at these levels kept inflation elevated, squeezed real incomes, and left the Federal Reserve with little room to cut interest rates.
The political consequences of this economic chain became apparent on November 3, 2026. Democrats retook control of both the Senate and the House, securing at least 54 Senate seats and 248 House seats, according to projections.
The result exceeded expectations of a “blue wave,” with some describing it as a “blue tsunami.” Trump himself – as well as his close aides and children – acknowledged that the war against Iran and the resulting rise in gasoline prices had contributed to the defeat.
JD Vance's response was particularly direct. In a lengthy post on X the morning after the election, he wrote: “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. The reason we lost is the war.” He added: “If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so.”
Drawing on focus-group research, Vance outlined four priorities for Republicans seeking to win back disaffected voters: ending the war, addressing the cost of living and inflation, putting America first, and changing the country's relationship with the Israeli regime.
Vance's call to “cut losses” has been widely interpreted as an effort to position himself for a 2028 presidential run. But the broader significance lies elsewhere: a war in West Asia, transmitted through the everyday economic pressure of higher oil prices, became a factor in reshaping the balance of power in the US Congress.
Republican lawmakers are now looking for scapegoats, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth emerging as a target and Marco Rubio reportedly facing pressure to resign.
Trump, for his part, attributed the defeat to the fact that he “wasn't on the ballot.” Whatever the competing explanations for the result, the election has exposed the domestic political costs of an overseas military campaign that contributed to rising fuel prices and the cost of living.
Trajectories and the unified logic at work
Taken together, these three trajectories reveal a common underlying logic. US-Israeli military aggression undermined the strategic rationale for Iran's nuclear restraint, turning a weapons program once treated as taboo into an increasingly discussable policy option.
In global anti-imperialist discourse, the strikes also weakened the moral force of non-proliferation norms, lending new weight to the argument that “sovereign states need nuclear weapons to survive.”
Economically, the war's costs were transmitted through energy prices to populations around the world, including American voters, contributing to an electoral backlash.
Iran deliberately sought to push the costs of aggression back into the domestic politics of American imperialism. The Republican defeat is not the endpoint of this dynamic, but its clearest demonstration that in a deeply interconnected world, the costs of military aggression can eventually reach the aggressor's own doorstep, often in unexpected ways.
This is the emerging narrative of Iran's rise as a power shaped by the ashes and blood of war.
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