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This strike also ignited a firestorm within the halls of the U.S. Senate, where the capture of figures like Nicolás Maduro in separate operations had already pushed the debate over Presidential war powers to a breaking point. Washington is currently gripped by an intense constitutional confrontation. Critics argue that the executive branch has overstepped its bounds, launching preemptive strikes that bypass the congressional right to declare war. Proponents, however, argue that in an age of hypersonic missiles and nuclear breakout windows, the deliberative speed of the 18th-century Constitution is no longer compatible with 21st-century survival. This domestic political fracture ensures that even if the missiles stop flying over the Middle East, the fallout will continue to poison the political atmosphere in the United States for years to come.
As the smoke clears over the Fordo facility, the global community is left to contemplate the wreckage of the previous status quo. The strikes have created a vacuum where a coherent regional policy used to sit. To the north, Russia and China watch with calculated interest, weighing how this American entanglement can be leveraged to their own advantage in their respective spheres of influence. To the south, the Gulf monarchies prepare for the inevitable blowback, their skylines of glass and steel looking increasingly fragile against the backdrop of potential drone swarms and ballistic threats. The night of the 2026 strikes has effectively reset the clock of the Middle East, and no one is quite sure what time it is.