The Winner Of Trump's Iran War? Iran

Whether Gulf states will want US bases in the medium to long term, after this, is now an open question. And are any US personnel at all left in Iraq? Iraqi Shiites supported Iran in the war.

Israeli military censorship makes it difficult to assess the damage to that country. The Haifa refinery was hit, as were military and intelligence research institutes. Netanyahu was clearly over-confident in Israeli interceptors.

Many Israelis have had to move house to sleep in shelters. Moreover, Israel is running out of interceptors faster than Iran is running out of ballistic missiles, so that if the war continued, at some point Israel would be a sitting duck.

If Israel actually does agree to abide by Trump's two-week ceasefire, that is the reason–Israel is days from being completely vulnerable to Iran's strikes. Already, Arrow interceptors are so low that Israel has had to let some missiles through if they seemed to be headed for relatively unpopulated areas. In that sense, Israel lost on points.

I have argued that the war failed not only because the government still stands but because its annual income from petroleum and new Strait of Hormuz tolls could be several times what it was earning from petroleum sales to China before the war.

Petroleum prices are falling from highs because of the two-week ceasefire, which may or not signal the end of the war. But so much supply has been destroyed or delayed in the Gulf that prices could remain high in the coming year. Likely a third of the Gulf's refining capacity has been damaged.

Trump has been forced to lift sanctions on Iranian petroleum. It is unclear whether, in the tight market of 2026, they can realistically be reimposed.

The Israeli-US aggression on Iran has taught it that it can use drone sabotage to extract tolls from ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see how that claim on fees can be reversed, since cheap drone strikes can always start fires on petroleum and Liquefied Natural Gas tankers.

It is so expensive to erect an anti-drone system that it would be much cheaper just to pay the toll. Moreover, insurers would want a system that was 100% effective, which no anti-drone or anti-missile system is.

Iran can't be made to back off by threatening its oil rigs, since if they were hit Iran could take out the Saudi, UAE, Bahraini and Kuwaiti oil rigs and cripple the world's energy.

As it is, Iran did substantial damage to Kuwait oil fields and on Monday struck the Saudi petrochemical complex at Jubail, as well as taking out 17% of Qatar's LNG production capacity at Ras Laffan.

Iran certainly suffered horribly during the 39-day Israeli-US campaign this spring. It lost on the order of 3,600 dead, including at least 1,665 civilians-babies and children (at least 200), women (at least 200) and over a thousand noncombatant men. Perhaps 20,000 Iranians have been wounded.

Other estimates for Iranians killed have ranged up to 6,000 but that may just be boasting by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Whiskey Pete Hegseth, the secretary of weird tattoos and loud boasting.

Iran has seen important research institutes, university programs, steel mills, petrochemical complexes, and other economic and infrastructural sites destroyed. It is likely, however, that these can be rebuilt if Iran has convinced Israel that it has the means of deterrence.

It is likely that Russia and China will help with the rebuilding, behind the scenes, because a strong Iran able to stand up to the US and its Israeli proxy is in their interests.

The Department of Defense alleges that it used 26 different aircraft, four land-based missile systems, and six sea-based weapons systems to hit some 13,000 targets inside Iran. Some of these targets were civilian objects and so the Pentagon is boasting of war crimes of a sort for which Japanese and German generals were prosecuted after WW II.

I can't find a separate count for Israeli strikes on Iran and I wonder if the Pentagon numbers are joint US and Israeli hits.

The Stars and Stripes reports that CENTCOM“said US forces have hit Iranian command and control centers, Iranian Revolutionary Guard headquarters, and intelligence sites, ballistic missile launchers, drone batteries, and anti-ship and anti-aircraft sites. The attacks have also hit at least one major bridge near Tehran, the capital, as well as warehouses and bunkers used in manufacturing.”