Six Months Into the US-Israel War With Iran, No One Is Winning
Six months after the United States and Israel opened a joint war against Iran, the conflict that President Donald Trump once described as a short, decisive operation has become something far messier: a grinding stalemate that has killed thousands, disrupted a fifth of the world’s energy trade, and left every major party short of its original goals. The fighting that began on February 28, 2026, with strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has not produced regime collapse, a reopened Strait of Hormuz, or a durable nuclear settlement. It has produced attrition.
The opening hours were designed to look like a knockout. U.S. and Israeli aircraft hit leadership compounds in Tehran, nuclear facilities, air-defense networks, missile sites, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval assets. Khamenei was killed. Other senior commanders died with him. Iran’s air force was largely grounded. Large parts of its navy were sunk or disabled. For a brief moment, it seemed the campaign Trump later called a “little excursion” might end on the timetable he had promised: four to six weeks.
Iran did not collapse. The Assembly of Experts quickly named Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as successor. He has barely been seen in public and is widely reported to have been wounded in the same strike that killed his father, but the system held. Tehran answered with missiles and drones against Israel and against U.S. bases and energy infrastructure in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah opened a second front from Lebanon. Within days, the war was no longer a one-way air campaign over Iran. It was a regional exchange in which the most valuable piece of geography was a narrow waterway.
That waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, has defined the second half of the war more than any single bomb. Before February, roughly 100 ships a day passed through it, many of them tankers carrying oil and gas. After Iran effectively closed or heavily restricted the strait, traffic collapsed—at times to a handful of vessels a day. Attacks on commercial shipping, mines, and a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports compounded the disruption. Insurance costs soared. Brent crude rose about 22 percent from its pre-war level and spiked far higher at points. The International Energy Agency organized one of its largest emergency stock releases. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to levels last seen in the early 1980s. The global economy did not crash the way some feared in March, but it was not spared either. Growth forecasts were cut. The shock was smaller than the 1970s oil crises because modern economies use less energy per unit of output—and because a boom in other sectors, including artificial intelligence investment, absorbed some of the blow. That is cold comfort in a region where shipping lanes remain a battlefield.
The human cost is harder to pin down than the oil price, because official counts diverge and independent monitors work under blackouts and restrictions. Compiled official figures cited in late August put at least about 3,500 dead in Iran and more than 4,300 in Lebanon, where Israeli operations against Hezbollah have continued even through ceasefire frameworks. About 60 Israelis and 18 U.S. service members have been killed; the Pentagon has reported more than 750 U.S. wounded. Broader tallies that include disputed military losses run higher. The United States has officially spent $37.5 billion on the war so far, a number that does not capture every repair, munition replacement, or extended deployment. Lawmakers have been told that stocks of certain precision missiles and interceptors have been drawn down sharply. Carriers have stayed at sea for unusually long stretches. Readiness elsewhere has suffered because assets were pulled from Europe and the Pacific.
Diplomacy has followed the same pattern as the fighting: bursts of hope, then collapse. A Pakistan-mediated ceasefire in April paused the most intense phase. On June 17, Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding meant to halt hostilities and reopen Hormuz during 60 days of talks. By July 8, after attacks on shipping, Trump declared the memorandum “over.” The United States reimposed the blockade. Strikes resumed. The 60-day window expired in mid-August without a final deal. Washington then announced what it called an “economic D-Day”—tighter sanctions on Iran and on anyone still providing it a financial lifeline. Tehran answered that pressure would not work and that Hormuz would not reopen on American terms. Trump has said he is “not in a hurry.” That phrase is an admission as much as a strategy. The original theory of the war assumed Iran would break quickly. It has not.
Israel’s position has also shifted. Jerusalem was central to the first night of the war. It is far less central to the talks that followed. Israeli officials have been iced out of much of the U.S.-Iran channel, even as Israeli forces still hold buffer areas in southern Lebanon and reserve the right to strike if Iran rebuilds nuclear or missile capacity. The divergence is not a full rupture. It is a reminder that Washington and Jerusalem no longer have identical clocks. The United States is managing oil prices, midterm politics, and munitions inventories. Israel is managing a northern frontier and a threat it still considers unfinished.
On paper, both coalitions can list achievements. The United States and Israel killed a supreme leader, wrecked much of Iran’s conventional air and naval power, damaged known enrichment sites, and lengthened estimates of how long Tehran would need to produce enough fissile material for a weapon. Iran survived the decapitation strike, kept a usable missile and drone force, and turned Hormuz into a veto over a clean American victory. The regime has used the war to tighten internal control even as inflation exploded and the rial collapsed. Survival is not the same as success. Degradation is not the same as surrender.
That is why the question “can anyone win?” has no satisfying answer six months in. A true military knockout of Iran would require a campaign far larger than the air-and-naval war Washington has been willing to fight—an invasion or a sustained assault on the state itself. There is little sign either the White House or the Pentagon wants that. Iran cannot defeat the United States in a conventional sense. Its strategy is endurance: make the price of continuation higher than the price of a deal. The problem is that the two sides still disagree on what a deal must contain. Washington wants an end to enrichment, an open strait, and a weakened IRGC. Tehran wants sanctions lifted, frozen assets released, U.S. forces pulled back, compensation, and an end to attacks on its regional allies. Those lists do not meet in the middle.
The most likely paths from here are unattractive. One is a frozen conflict: occasional strikes, a half-closed strait, sanctions layered on sanctions, and no peace agreement. Another is a messy compromise in which both governments claim they did not lose. A third is renewed escalation if either side decides the current pain is worse than the risk of going bigger. None of those looks like the four-week victory that was advertised in February.
Wars are often judged by who holds the last word. After six months, no one does. The United States has demonstrated that it can hit almost anything in Iran. Iran has demonstrated that it can still close a waterway the world cannot easily replace. Israel has demonstrated that it can fight on two fronts and still not finish the Iranian file. The public in the United States has noticed. Trump’s approval has fallen, and most Americans now expect the war to last a long time. That political fact may matter as much as the next missile salvo. A war that cannot be won quickly becomes a war that has to be explained. So far, no side has an explanation that matches the bill.
About The Author
