Who Is Winning the Iran War?

It is difficult to tell which side is winning in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran because the objectives and strategies for victory of the combatants are so different. This is even further complicated by the fact that, for the United States, many of the highest costs of the war lie outside the theater of conflict and involve the economic costs to U.S. allies and the diplomatic damage to the United States.

President Donald Trump and his advisers have laid out multiple goals for the United States, some quite limited and others expansive. These include ending Iran’s nuclear program, degrading its missile capabilities and conventional military stocks, stopping Tehran’s support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxy forces, and, most ambitiously, regime change in Tehran. To achieve these goals, the United States and Israel have killed Iranian leaders and bombed Iran’s military forces and infrastructure.

Iran, for its part, seeks to preserve its regime and, if it can, restore deterrence with the United States and Israel. It has also committed enormous political capital to its nuclear program and has a strategic as well as ideological commitment to its proxy forces. Tehran believes, probably correctly, that if it can survive the bombing, it can achieve many of these goals. To increase pressure on the United States in particular, Iran has attacked U.S. allies in the Gulf and shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States and Israel are doing well in traditional military terms. Within a week of the war’s beginning, Iran’s missile attacks fell by 90 percent due to U.S. and Israeli bombing and suppression efforts. Iran has also lost many of its missile launchers and weapons production sites, and the U.S. military claims it has sunk over 90 percent of Iran’s navy. Israel has killed over 250 Iranian leaders so far, including Iran’s supreme leader and almost all its senior military leadership.

The effects of these strikes are real but fall short of achieving the more ambitious U.S. goals. Iran, not a strong military power before the war, is now far weaker. It can rebuild its missile and other weapons programs—Iran has enough human capital to resume work after the shooting stops—but this will take time and money. In addition, because Iran now lacks viable air defenses, Israel can (and likely will) bomb Iranian facilities in the future even if there is a ceasefire in the near term.

Iran’s nuclear program is severely set back, but this is not a significant change. Although the United States has targeted nuclear sites as part of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran’s nuclear program in 2025 had already severely set it back.

Regime change, of course, has not happened. It has been only a few months since the clerical regime brutally repressed mass protests, killing thousands, and despite the deaths of many senior leaders, the regime appears to have a firm hold on power. Iran proxies, like its nuclear program, had been hit hard before the war, especially Hezbollah. Both Hezbollah and the Houthis have attacked Israel, but the impact of these attacks has been limited, and Israel has further devastated Hezbollah.

Despite these real losses, Tehran has raised the price of the war for the United States and its allies. Iran’s attacks on U.S. Gulf allies have killed dozens of people, damaged major industrial and energy sites, and hurt their image as an oasis of calm in a turbulent region. In the long-term, however, the attacks may hurt Iran’s influence in the region. The Gulf states are understandably furious at Tehran, and they may move closer to the United States and Israel as a result.

Most consequentially, Iran has choked off traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, leading to dramatic increases in oil and gas prices as well as essential items like fertilizers. The price of gas in the United States is the highest it has been since 2022, a political headache for the Trump administration as well as an economic risk to the United States.

The long-term cost for the United States, however, is likely to be far bigger outside the Middle East. The United States has burned through difficult-to-replace munitions like Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors, leaving other theaters like Europe and Asia short. From Southeast Asia to Australia to Europe, the sudden surge in gas, fertilizer, and oil prices has devastated economies, possibly pushing the world economy into recession.

In many countries, the United States is likely to be blamed for the difficult economic situation, with a resulting increase in anti-U.S. sentiment, raising the political price for when the United States seeks their cooperation against China, Russia, or other threats. The administration’s diplomatic approach made this worse, as it began a major war without even bothering to consult allies—and then berated them for not helping more, including demands that they open the Strait of Hormuz, a mission the far more formidable U.S. Navy is not prepared to undertake.

Iran’s conventional capabilities are badly degraded, its leadership decimated, and its missile program and defense base set back. But wars are decided by more than battlefield metrics. Iran’s strategy has been to endure, impose costs, and shift the conflict’s center of gravity outward, and it is achieving meaningful success. By destabilizing global energy markets, straining U.S. alliances, and exposing the limits of American coercive power, Tehran has ensured that even a tactically successful campaign carries significant strategic liabilities for Washington.

Daniel Byman is the director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also a professor at Georgetown University.