The war nobody is winning

In early April the leader of a 250-year-old nation threatened a  2,500-year-old civilisation that he would ‘bring them back to  the stone ages’. Days later he warned that ‘a whole civilisation will  die tonight’ adding ‘I don't want that to happen, but it probably  will’. Such threats would have sounded ridiculous if they had not  been made by an angry leader of the world’s most powerful  country.  

Ruins of Persepolis, symbolising Iran’s 2,500-year-old civilisation invoked in wartime rhetoric. Photo: Blondinrikard Fröberg/Creative Commons Attribution 

Neither threat was carried out, but they illustrate how a vicious  war that started on 28 February had by April become a war of  words, threats and blackmail, though not before a great many  deaths and much destruction on the ground. A related war has  been taking place between Israel and Lebanon, to which the  government of Lebanon is not a party. 

Far from the onset of a third world war, as some predicted, the  mood in late April favoured ‘jaw jaw’ rather than ‘war war’ –  talking rather than fighting – to coin an expression attributed to  Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill. Yet the threats  continued with President Trump writing that if Iran did not take  the deal he was offering the United States ‘is going to knock out  every single Power Plant, and every single bridge, in Iran’.

Donald Trump announces US–Israeli strikes on Iran on  28 February 2026, marking the start of a conflict that has since yielded no clear winner. Photo: Reuters 

President Trump has been obsessed with humbling Iran since his  first term of office when he took the US out of the Joint  Comprehensive Plan of Action. The JCPOA was negotiated  between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN  Security Council – the US, UK, France, Russia and China – along  with Germany, to limit Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme in  return for the lifting of economic sanctions. It was signed in  Vienna in July 2015, when Barack Obama was US president. 

The JCPOA was endorsed by the UN Security Council, making it  a tenet of international law, and approved by Iran’s parliament in  October 2015 with 161 votes in favour, 59 against, and 13  abstentions. The US Congress failed to endorse the deal amid  strong opposition, but it came into effect with the US government  calling it a ‘non-binding political commitment’ which did not  need congressional approval. Nuclear-related sanctions were  lifted by the UN, the EU and the US in January 2016. 

In May 2018 President Trump (who began his first term in  January 2017) withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and  reimposed ‘the highest level’ of economic sanctions. War between  the US and Iran has been building since that time. It was  quiescent during Joe Biden’s presidency despite reports that Iran  had exceeded the uranium enrichment levels agreed under the  JCPOA, but was a preoccupation of Donald Trump when he came  back to power fifteen months ago. It seemed like a rash decision  when he ended talks and, hand-in-hand with Israel, launched  strikes on Tehran on 28 February. 

Now the signs are that he wants to wind the war down despite not  achieving either of his supposed aims: to force Iran to surrender  its stockpile of enriched uranium, ostensibly the casus belli of the  war, or to bring about ‘regime change’.

An Iranian defiance poster reproduced in an  international newspaper reflects how the conflict is  being framed beyond the battlefield. 

After seven weeks of fighting, no side has won or seems likely to  win. Iran saw its Supreme Leader and many other senior leaders  killed, yet the government of the Islamic Republic remains  operational with no signs of surrender. An estimated 3,500 people  have been killed, mostly civilians including a significant number  of children. The US claims to have sunk or disabled the country’s  entire naval force and to have ‘taken control’ of Iranian air space  but appears not to have inflicted much damage on the more  significant Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iran’s  infrastructure has been damaged but its ability to produce and  export huge volumes of oil and related products remains intact. 

At least 1,500 have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched  intensive bombardment of Beirut and the south of the country  aimed, it said, at eliminating Hezbollah, a fighting force allied to  the Iranian government. Many Lebanese people have been  rendered homeless by the bombing. 

In Lebanon, Israeli bombardment has killed over 1,500 people and displaced large numbers of civilians, particularly in Beirut and the south, as fighting against Hezbollah intensifies. Photo: Reuters 

Israel itself has come under fire from both Hezbollah and Iran  and suffered an undisclosed number of civilian casualties,  showing the limitations of its ‘iron dome’ defence system  designed to bring down missiles heading for populated areas. The  United States has admitted to the deaths of 13 members of its  armed forces and lost a number of aircraft – at an air base in  Saudi Arabia, over Kuwait and Iraq and in Iran itself. In most  cases the pilots were rescued.  

So, has anybody won? 

Clearly the US and Israel have suffered less severely than Iran or  Lebanon, though if economic cost were brought into the equation  both countries have spent many millions of dollars fighting the  war that they started. What is hard to see is what they have  gained. Iran retains its enriched uranium – despite claims that it  was ‘destroyed’ by US and Israeli action in the Twelve-Day War  last June. The war has resulted in disruption to free passage  through the Strait of Hormuz. 

The war has raised tension between the US and its European  allies in NATO, who have refused to become involved in ‘Trump’s  war’. Several have banned US military aircraft from overflying  their territory. Arab Gulf states Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United  Arab Emirates, Oman as well as Saudi Arabia, have themselves  suffered damage from Iranian strikes, which will have  undermined their confidence in the US – or indeed the UK –  defending them, though some of their leaders, uneasy about  Iran’s power, are urging the US to ‘finish the job’. All have suffered  damage to their oil and gas exporting ability and thus their  economies.

Domestically, President Trump is suffering a backlash even from  traditional supporters, with television commentator Tucker  Carlson, a Trump supporter, claiming the President has become a  slave to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has  visited Washington six times since Donald Trump returned to  office. The high price of petrol is likely to cause an anti-Trump  backlash at US mid-term elections in November. 

Civilian areas in Iran bear the brunt of the conflict, with widespread destruction and rising casualties. Photo: Reuters 

Apart from the combative nations the greatest impact has been  felt by Asian nations who import most of their fuel, fertiliser and  related products from the Gulf. Japan and South Korea are  understood to have many days stockpiles of fuel, delaying the  pain of raised fuel prices. Island nations like Sri Lanka, Taiwan  and the Philippines, landlocked Nepal, Bhutan and Laos and even  countries with ports like Pakistan, Myanmar and Thailand are  severely affected by shortages and resulting rationing. There is  expected to be a significant loss of remittances sent home by the  millions of Asian workers in the Gulf states many of whom risk  losing their jobs. The longer the strait remains closed the deeper  will be the economic cost. 

There are no winners from this latest Gulf conflict and the world  seems a less safe place.