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In war, there are usually winners. Someone gains territory, influence, or deterrence. The Iran war has produced none of that. After months of fighting, thousands of casualties, soaring energy prices, and one of the largest American military deployments in the Middle East in decades, it is difficult to identify a single participant that achieved its central objective. What began as a campaign to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat and reassert Western deterrence has instead become a case study in the limits of military power.
The United States spent billions without securing surrender. Israel widened the conflict without finding a lasting solution. Iran absorbed devastating losses yet remained standing. Russia and China watched a partner come under attack with little ability to shape events.
Even countries far from the battlefield paid the price through disrupted trade and volatile energy markets.
High expectations
When President Donald Trump declared that the United States had "complete and total control of the skies over Iran" and called for Iran's "unconditional surrender", it set the tone for what the war was supposed to be: a swift, overwhelming campaign that would force Tehran to capitulate. It has not worked out that way.
The demand for unconditional surrender was always more rhetoric than strategy. Iran is not a country that bends easily. It survived the 2009 Green Movement, the sanctions regime that decimated its economy, repeated waves of domestic protest in 2019, 2022, and 2025, and years of covert Israeli operations that killed scientists and generals. The Islamic Republic has survived by absorbing punishment and refusing to fold.
Demanding surrender from such a government, without a credible plan to enforce it, was less a war aim than a political performance.
Iran: Decapitated, not defeated
Iran entered this war in a weakened state. Years of sanctions had already hollowed out its economy. The 12-Day War of June 2025 had damaged its air defences and nuclear infrastructure. Domestic protests had killed thousands of its citizens and shaken the regime's confidence. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening strikes on February 28, 2026 created: a power vacuum, not a revolution.
His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was installed as the new Supreme Leader, and billboards carrying his image appeared on Tehran's streets within days. The IRGC's command structure, which had been designed to operate with decentralised authority in exactly this kind of scenario, continued to function.
Iran's retaliatory strikes extended across nine countries. Ali Larijani, described as the de facto leader of Iran and the number one target after Khamenei, was assassinated by Israel on March 17.
None of it produced the popular uprising that Trump and Netanyahu had predicted. On March 18, then-US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard assessed that the regime "appears to be intact, but largely degraded", and warned that if it survived, it would "seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild". The civilian cost inside Iran has been severe, and almost entirely unreported in real time. The regime imposed what became the longest state-ordered internet blackout ever recorded in any country. According to NetBlocks, connectivity dropped to around 1% of pre-war levels from February onwards. Combined with an earlier blackout imposed in January 2026 during the domestic protests, Iranians spent close to two-thirds of 2026 in near-total digital darkness. The economic damage was staggering. Afshin Kolahi, head of a business commission at Iran's Chamber of Commerce, estimated direct losses from internet shutdowns at $30 to $40 million per day, rising to $70 to $80 million when indirect effects were included. Petrochemical exports, which account for a large share of non-oil revenues, were suspended entirely after strikes on production facilities in Assaluyeh and Mahshahr. Reconstruction at some sites, analysts warned, could take years.
The IRGC, paradoxically, emerged from the war more consolidated than before. The clerical leadership had been gutted. The civilian government had been sidelined. What remained was a military-security apparatus that had always operated as a state within a state, and that now found itself filling the vacuum left by the deaths of top officials.
US: Expensive, unpopular, inconclusive
America went to war against Iran in the face of domestic opposition that never fully materialised into political pressure but has steadily grown. A strong majority of Americans, roughly six in ten, opposed military strikes on Iran from the outset. By April 2026, a poll by Ipsos found that 51% of Americans believed that US military operations in Iran had not been worthwhile. Only 24% saw the outcomes as beneficial. Part of the problem was that the objectives kept shifting. When Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, he outlined a sprawling list of goals in his video addres…
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