Iran Is Still Seething Over Israel’s 12-Day War And America’s Operation Midnight Hammer.

Tehran; December 2025: After the Israel – US joint attack on Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has zero interest in resetting relations. Rather, he is been tying any talks to Washington abandoning Israel and pulling out of the region.

The new National Security Strategy largely sidelines Iran, counting on damaged nuclear sites and regional isolation to contain Tehran while the White House focuses on Russia and Ukraine, leaving the U.S. policy stuck on “manage, don’t engage”, with Israel as the wild card and the risk that proxies like the Houthis or Hamas could drag Washington back into confrontation.

Although resilient by force, Iran is still outrageous about Israel’s 12-Day War and America’s bombing of Iranian nuclear infrastructure during Operation Midnight Hammer. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is as defiant as ever and has no interest in working with the United States and Israel for peace in the region. This means that Iran is likely to continue pursuing a nuclear device and someday mate it to a missile, even though the Trump administration said the bombing completely destroyed the nuclear sites.

Khamenei is still feral about US support for Israel and claims he will not engage in diplomacy with the Americans unless they quit supporting the Jewish state. The Iranian supreme leader wants the United States to pull all military personnel out of the Middle East, and he declared that the Americans should not meddle in the region’s affairs. It would be challenging to execute a US grand strategy in the Middle East without some relations with Iran, even though Tehran is a state sponsor of terror and always wishes to destabilize the region. But that could be the new US doctrine; ignoring the Iranians while fabricating them to be an international pariah.

The White House’s latest National Security Strategy makes only 03 references to Iran, but it includes the following statement:

“Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran, the region’s chief destabilising force, has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains thorny, but thanks to the ceasefire and release of hostages President Trump negotiated, progress toward a more permanent peace has been made”, according to the strategy.

Without Iranian influence on Hamas and Gaza, a long-range peace and stability outcome may be difficult to obtain. The diplomatic standoff between the United States and Iran could affect oil prices and the regional balance of power.

Israel would gladly attack Iran again, as would the United States, if both countries had actionable intelligence that Tehran decided to spin up its nuclear weapons program.

President Donald Trump has made a few diplomatic overtures to Iran. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, tried to work with Iran on an agreement about Tehran’s nuclear weapons program early this year. Still, since then, Witkoff has been busy negotiating with Ukraine and Russia to end that war. In June, before Operation Midnight Hammer, Witkoff wanted a new “Trump deal” focused on Iran to achieve long-term peace between the two countries.

“We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors. I think that the conversations are promising. “We are hopeful that we can reach a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran”, Steve Witkoff had reiterated in an interview in the month of June 2025.

Khamenei is still smarting from attacks by the United States and Israel. He used the anniversary of the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis to whip his audience into a frenzy during a speech last week. He said that every American presidential administration since then has sought to weaken and humiliate Iran.

Khamenei wants his country to have complete independence and sovereignty before he will begin any new talks with the United States. He explained how the 1979 US embassy takeover was a “day of pride and victory”.

Trump has said that he “blasted the hell” out of Iran and that Iran had “no nuclear capability” in a 60 Minutes interview. This would require clear evidence from intelligence sources that Iran was resuming uranium enrichment. The US President could hold the possibility of a further attack against Iran as leverage for future talks, but that assumes Iran would come to the table.

Iran has dug in hard against diplomatic relations with the Americans, and no negotiations are possible in the near term. Israel would be against working with Iran for some comprehensive peace deal. The United States is more concerned with Russia and Ukraine anyway, and the Iranian situation is on the back burner. The National Security Strategy does not have a clear roadmap for dealing with Iran, and it looks like the status quo will be the policy toward Khamenei. That doesn’t mean Israel will stay peaceful against Tehran, and air strikes from that country could happen at any time.

Now everything depends on Witkoff; if he can return to the region with some peace plan. However, that is not likely to begin this year and may be put off until there is a ceasefire in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Khamenei will continue to shake his fist at the “American menace” and refuse any diplomatic overtures.

The country is still a state sponsor of terrorism, and they could even encourage the Houthis terrorists in Yemen to resume attacks on civilian and military shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Trump administration will probably leave things simmering with Iran. The US government is used to defiant rhetoric from Khamenei, and unless the nuclear program heats back up, there is no incentive to make a deal with Tehran. The Israelis are the wild card and will significantly influence US policy.

If Iran encourages Hamas in Gaza to continue the war, then the Americans may request that Iran realize that they are making few friends around the world. But for now, Iran is not likely to change its policy of being a spoiler in the Middle East.

Team Maverick.